We summarize here: What IS the essence of this archtypal MONSANTO MISTAKE?: The Monsanto Mistake is the tragic error of Monsanto philosophy- to NOT understand that the fundamental (phase conjugate and therefore NEGENTROPIC) field of DNA- DEPENDS on GENETIC DIVERSITY. Genetic diversity- is in essence the same principle as FRACTALITY- because it enables the HARMONIC INCLUSIVENESS- which biologically DEFINES viability ( see goldenmean.info/holarchy ). Essentially DNA which experiences wild diversity- picks up the SELF ORGANIZING negentropy- which phase conjugation allows: literally- IMPLOSION requires that DNA be set free:

2 Example Stories:

1. When my friends at Crystal Hill Farm (the Seneca Natives)- installed the HEIRLOOM SEEDS garden- near the labyrinth and pine tree circle- we had 7 different color beans, and corn, and tomatoes. It was a RIOT of EXTREME genetic diversity- open pollinated and indigenous seeds. THAT garden had vegetables which were OUTSTANDING. Seriously- my cosmic friends at the time (Vincent Bridges and Darlene and.. )- they said- the lucid dreams- they had when eating these super heirloom vegetables- were better than .. LSD!?!?
It is true that when the DNA is happy and smart enough - the inner visions they contains... are like DNA RADIO to the whole! (cold plasma implosion IS the heart of the collective conscious).

The point is- this extreme genetic diversity- open pollinated- indigenous seeds DNA- is the OPPOSITE OF THE MONSANTO MISTAKE!

Story number 2. When my friend Susan Ambrose showed me how the sacred corn meal of Grandfather Dan of the Hopi- could CALL THE WIND anytime- I studied the science. In fact - the wind would come when you sprinkled the corn meal. I now know it is similar to the physics of kundalini and rainmaking. Grandfather Dan- always said- that this sacred corn had been in their family for thousands of years- and it would only germinate when you sang the right song in ritual. THAT DNA was smartest of the family pets. DNA can be a piezo fired phono rung- DNA radio!

Moksha wrote- They (Monsanto et al) would never have put the human infertility gene into the corn unless they first had the antidote to use on themselves. Initially I mistakenly thought it produced a temporary infertility like the pill, later I discovered it meant life long reproductive infertility from just inhaling the pollen blowing in the wind or taking a single bite of a biscuit containing the epicyte gm infertility gene in corn. see the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mA5yQ4_De_M

I made a second mistake in thinking it only affected womens fertility, not realsing it aslo made men infertile. This could easily make all humans infertile forever.

Why? Evidence points to glyphosate toxicity from the overuse of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide on our food.

For over three decades, Stephanie Seneff, PhD, has researched biology and technology, over the years publishing over 170 scholarly peer-reviewed articles. In recent years she has concentrated on the relationship between nutrition and health, tackling such topics as Alzheimer’s, autism, and cardiovascular diseases, as well as the impact of nutritional deficiencies and environmental toxins on human health.

At a conference last Thursday, in a special panel discussion about GMOs, she took the audience by surprise when she declared, “At today’s rate, by 2025, one in two children will be autistic.” She noted that the side effects of autism closely mimic those of glyphosate toxicity, and presented data showing a remarkably consistent correlation between the use of Roundup on crops (and the creation of Roundup-ready GMO crop seeds) with rising rates of autism. Children with autism have biomarkers indicative of excessive glyphosate, including zinc and iron deficiency, low serum sulfate, seizures, and mitochondrial disorder.

A fellow panelist reported that after Dr. Seneff’s presentation, “All of the 70 or so people in attendance were squirming, likely because they now had serious misgivings about serving their kids, or themselves, anything with corn or soy, which are nearly all genetically modified and thus tainted with Roundup and its glyphosate.”

Update: Aug 2011; Food INC:

Dedicated to White Crow - who wrote:
"I saw this in ODE magazine this month and it really gets
my hackles up because it is TRUE. - "Farmers in North
America already beset by economic woes now must also fear the
"seed police." Biotech company Monsanto has 75 police
and a budget of $10 million US to nail farmers using their
patented seeds in an "improper manner." Including the
age old tradition of saving them to plant for following year.
Charges have been brought against an elderly Saskatchewan farmer
who authorities concede wasn't even a Monsanto client - the company's
seeds blew onto his land from a neighboring field. According
to the progressive publication Sojourners (April 10,2005) cases
have been filed against 150 farmers and 40 other small businesses.
Every year Monsanto investigates some 500 farmers. So far, the
biotech giant has earned more than $15 million US from court cases
it has won. One unlucky farmer even spent eight months behind
bars." (end)

So, if you don't thing Corporate America has the world by the
short hairs - stay tuned to see what they can come up with next.
I had also read that they have gone into South America, found
plants and put a copywrite on the DNA; then fined the local farmers
for using the seeds they kept from year to year - when it was
their plants in the first place! Mankind is totally out of control
to let this happen. - White Crow" ('Soylent Green'-here we come...)

http://www.skeptically.org/finc/id2.html There's nothing they are leaving untouched: the mustard, the okra, the bringe oil, the rice, the cauliflower. Once they have established the norm: that seed can be owned as their property, royalties can be collected. We will depend on them for every seed we grow of every crop we grow. If they control seed, they control food, they know it -- it's strategic. It's more powerful than bombs. It's more powerful than guns. This is the best way to control the populations of the world. The story starts in the White House, where Monsanto often got its way by exerting disproportionate influence over policymakers via the "revolving door". One example is Michael Taylor, who worked for Monsanto as an attorney before being appointed as deputy commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1991. While at the FDA, the authority that deals with all US food approvals, Taylor made crucial decisions that led to the approval of GE foods and crops. Then he returned to Monsanto, becoming the company's vice president for public policy.

Thanks to these intimate links between Monsanto and government agencies, the US adopted GE foods and crops without proper testing, without consumer labeling and in spite of serious questions hanging over their safety. Not coincidentally, Monsanto supplies 90 percent of the GE seeds used by the US market. Monsanto's long arm stretched so far that, in the early nineties, the US Food and Drugs Agency even ignored warnings of their own scientists, who were cautioning that GE crops could cause negative health effects. Other tactics the company uses to stifle concerns about their products include misleading advertising, bribery and concealing scientific evidence.

Here is what Monsanto NEEDS
TO KNOW! - DNA- review - excerpt from goldenmean.info/12strands:What is the "Dance of 7 Veils", the "7th
Seal", and the "7th Sign" about? - Are there really
12 "strands' in your DNA when you "Ascend"? - What's
the PHYSICS?

This week we sat and watched
Harry Potter in 'Chamber of Secrets' explain in perfect English
what a MUD
BLOOD is with very good physics understood
by most kids.
A MUD BLOOD is someone who hasn't chosen the long term discipline
to ignite their DNA with charge.
The result is the failure to acheive the only possible path to
psychokinesis (Harry Potter style) and immmortality.
The kids know - too bad the scientists don't.

Read below how the DNA thread begins as 5 'threaded'
spins - then when that thread is recursively braided exactly SEVEN
more times it turns inside out into an(imploding and
gravity making and star bending) TORUS DONUT - LORD OF THE
RING. With 5 spins inside and SEVEN spins outside - this makes
exactly "12 Strands" in your DNA!.. Except using physics
instead of new age language we create precise scientific instructions
for getting your DNA on PHIRE..

Summary- (for the pictorial series below) - Genetic
Power Spectra (Montauk's 'Boson 7': Michael
Ash time empath story / Anikin's 'Chloridians'
- also see link 'decode' above ) reveals how axes of spin symmetry
('strands') or dimensions are superposed in DNA. This illustrates
how the electrical properties of gravity ("God") making
implosion are generated in DNA. First the 3 axis cube is tilt
spun into the '4th dimension hypercube tesseract': the dodecahedron.
(The shape
Poincare symmetry suggests makes gravity from charge ,and
the shape of palladium - key to cold fusion - pic below). Then
that is 'wratcheted' or stepped down the helix stairway into the
slinky that is DNA - the 5th dimension. FIVE spins are in that
thread.

> Is this the 7th Sign, the 7th
Seal, the 7th Veil??>> THEN - the thread is braided
into string, the string is braided into rope, the rope is braided
into FAT rope - until upon the SEVENTH superposed BRAIDING or
nesting-- the DNA in the 7 color DONUT map - becomes TOROIDAL
(physics measures: circularDNA, ringlord -links above).
This occurs mostly & appropriately at sex, bliss, tantra,
kundalini, death etc.( 7
Spins Outside, 5 Spins Inside should
begin to sound a bit familiar - hint Heart of the Sun, the Human
and Heart of Hydrogen... the perfect Gordian Slip Knot that is
DNA, origin
of alphabet, and all of the above! If
there are 5 strands or braid threads inside, and then 7 more into
the DONUT DNA - does this mean that evolution designed 12 STRANDS
in your DNA? - more correctly 12 axes of spin .. So - you new
age "12 strand DNA" wu
wu's - Anna Hayes et al.. stop talkin
STRANDS - you make the biologists laugh- use correct language
- refer to harmonic analysis or power spectra. )

This TOROIDAL DNA (see photomicrographs at links) maximizes
the DNA designed ability to EMBED and attract / 'eat' the charge
from its environment. (To inHAbit is
to breath charge into - by gravity making in the fractal center).
Only fractality / harmonic inclusiveness triggers the (implosion)
compression 'sacred space' necessary to ignite DNA. -This finishes
the necessary compression turned into acceleration (gravity )
by recursive heterodyning CONSTRUCTIVE (because of Golden
Ratio) interference of the PHASE velocities of charge in DNA
(see black hole making in DNA physics reference below).
The important connection to make is from the physics - to the
'inner muscle building' psychology. Allow DNA to make the gravity
to make you immortal - electrically COHERENT
& therefore sustainable as a charge field or KA - measureable
at death , the beginning of the SHEM-an.

The downside is if you don't train your DNA to make its
own gravity (implode with bliss/ ecstatic coherence) - you become
by electrical definition only suitable as food for the borg /
parasites (+ join George Bush's America
Bushraped generation - invasion
of the ET shapeshifters **). The ONLY thing the low grade
genetic (Nephalim - fallen DNA) parasites who have shapeshifted
into control of most of the planet's military CANNOT withstand
is the implosion of charge in the aura of humans who have chosen
BLISS ignition / genetic evolution. That is why the global political
pressure is immense to keep you in bad air, bad food, bad magnetism
- in short in the CITY. Otherwise your DNA might get free and
be more star steering than theirs could ever be.

**we're betting
the US is not going to be the first national government to realize
that pumping even modest amounts of (charge dense) OXYGEN into
government buildings eliminates all parasites, shapeshifters,
'entities' from elected officials...not to mention AIDS &
cancer.

Dan, I am sending you a copy of my response email to
the FDA. You can count me as one who cares and is aware. Michael

>In a 1-2 punch >Monsanto >-systematically
permanently murders most every food seed on the planet
, Our seed stock is the most precious resource. Without the natural
cycle of seed to plant to seed, the Earth
and it's people could die. It has come to my attention the Government
willfully, and knowingly aided and
abetted the Corp.. Food producers in devising a plan to forever
break this precious cycle, for profit and
material gain. This is a grievous error in judgment, and can only
lead to our mutual doom. These
genetically neutered mutant seed stocks must, and will be destroyed
by the forces of creation. If the
Government is to be on the side of life and nature it must act
to reverse it's decision to enact this
geneticide plan. I would not want to be the one to pull the trigger,
but witnessing this kind of contempt
for life can make one feel contempt as well. Out of respect for
life and nature, do everything in your
power to stop this insane and ill conceived plan to end the seed
to plant cycle, or you doom your own seed to oblivion.
Michael
---
The Meek Should Inherit The Earth,for Only the Bold May Inherit
The Stars
http://www.ufotechnology.com

I have been told that the scientists who have gene
spliced up the (mucous forming) wheat in your toast this morning,
along with soon the majority of your diet, consider 70-90% of
the DNA they start with to be "non-coding". This essentially
means, they see most of the DNA they hack up to make your food,
as useless. This effectively means that if they do not see an
immediate effect on the grocery store value of some chunk of code,
to them it is useless. It may have taken a million years to get
the context of that part of the DNA braid right by nature, but
one millisecond computer mediated slice, and it is gone from your
diet forever. This decision is most likely made by someone testing
for next weeks payroll survival, as opposed to considering our
next 7 generations genetic survival.

We would do well to carefully consider what this lost CONTEXT
is doing to OUR DNA.

To begin our study I would recommend the book "Grammatical
Man, Information Entropy Language and Life" by Jeremy Campbell.
Here the author examines the question: as an information conduit,
why does DNA have high "signal to noise ratio"? This
means that the relative amount of noise or "coding mistakes"
which emerge from DNA is incredibly miniscule, compared to the
HUGE number of information transactions occurred repeated in translating
DNA to RNA to proteins to people... No radio station ever got
such a good batting average to acheive successful transmission
of info across electrical spaces. Now the author in this book
comes around to a lovely answer to his own question. He says that
DNA acheives such sustainable accuracy in such a large number
of "bookings" is because of what he calls "context
dependancy" or context richness. This means that there is
such a large scale coherence in what codon groups are arranged
in meaningful sets, that if one code comes missing, THEN IT CAN
ALWAYS BE REPLACED OR LOGICALLY INTERPOLATED BY CONTEXT ALONE.
This is kind of like noticing that large scale distribution of
children across huge aunt and uncle families is possible because
the discipline and embedding of relationships, ensures that all
will be served and none will be lost.

Think of it like this, if you were a software person trying
to debug a large mega program you would NEVER attempt to interpret
the machine code. No you would go to the code groupings within
the code groupings within the code groupings. Words within words
within words are what makes waves nestable within waves within
waves.

It turns out that another name for exactly what that author
has called high "context dependancy" in DNA, is literally
the word BRAIDING.

In software this means C++ contains assembler which contains
hexadecimal which contains raw machine code. In poetry this means
letters within words within sentences within phrases within chapters
within books... The overall flavor of meaning ARISES BECAUSE OF
CONTEXT. Now mechanically in DNA this means that the discipline
of the braid within the braid within the braid, turns the fine
thread of the codons, braided into string, into rope, into fat
rope, into VERY fat rope. As a wave function this puts a little
wave more and more embedded into wave within wave. In radio terms
this puts a carrier wave inside an envelope inside a bigger envelope.

Each superposed axis of spin, is actually the discipline
of a longer wave braided (envelope to contained carrier wave)
on a short. When the ratio of the longer wave envelop to its carrier,
is a multiple of the Golden Mean, then wave interference is recursively
constructive. This is called being embedability.
(accomplished by the HEART's-link-
field effect when you feel magnetic implosion's rush called "compassion"
).When this wave on wave in DNA by braid recursion is successively
sustained, eventually a wave the size of your back yards magnetic
field, is embedded. This superposed axis of spin, is called "dimension"
in physics, and explanation behind the new age oversimplification
described as "having 12th (dodeca) dimensional DNA".
This is how the magnetic worm up the center zipper of DNA implodes,
and becomes self organizing/steering/self-aware and superluminal
(faster than light). (See "physics
of cancer as touch forgotten.")

We have always known that Emotion directly affects DNA.
Consider the simple example the if you were depressed this week
your chances of getting a cold are very much higher. The cold
virus is mostly DNA. What we now can understand is HOW emotion
programs the DNA. We have shown that long waves in gland harmonics
set up a pony tail braiding in the DNA, which responds like a
slinky to heart phonons. The active sites which can receive the
RNA to choose replication, in simple terms, just become struturally
available to the physical space required to connect RNA to DNA...
DEPENDING SPECIFICALLY ON WHETHER THEY ARE INSIDE OR OUTSIDE THE
BRAID. So whoever made the braiding decisions IS the programmer
of DNA's code. Glen
Rein's article on his measured response of DNA wrapping to coherent
EKG, was published in ISSEM after he and I discussed this
idea.

So what does this mean?

Well, for one thing it means that the human genome project
may not be such a key if we dont add info about frequency harmonics
in DNA braiding.

William Pensinger in NM has measured signals propagating
along the DNA helix moving faster than light. I now believe that
when the ratio of carrier to enveloping in the DNA braid is by
powers of the Golden Mean, the recursive adding and multiplying
affects wave velocities thru light speed. This I suggest creates
the superluminal wormhole which begins to move thru time. This
brings us to the threshold of a spiritual language involving what
parts of genetic memory survive lucid dreaming and death.

My friend Professor John Hubbard, University Buffalo Medical
School, was developing a fascinating theory of aging. He essentially
postulated that aging happened when DNA's core hydrogen bond became
unstable as the "zipper function". Intertesting because
right here would be the most charge dense linear accelerator if
something were squirting very fast up the core. Geometrically
this fits exquisitely. The codon rung place in the middle has
been modeled as having a golden mean rectangle bond geometry.
This spark gap COULD BE EMBEDDABLE. This spark gap could launch
harmonics "in PHI knitly". This could be another flying
finger: Pteradactyl.

So to put all this geometric interpretation of DNA into
simple terms:

You braid the DNA recursively. It becomes more self referential
and more self aware and more self organizing as a wave. The result
is a superluminal squirt gun to launch light into the time lines.
This (this author believes) is directly related to the SPIRITUAL
CONCEPT OF SOUL.

Collecting data, tingle in the DNA at the moment of intense
emotion, appears to relate directly to the survival of memory
thru the lucid dream, and presumeably the bardo (death). www.http://www.goldenmean.info/syllabus

Now my suggestion for this article is that long term long
wave coherence, braid embedding by recursion to maximally embed
the shape of environment creates superluminal wave sustainability
in DNA. This nourishes us spiritually in the birth of "soul
force". When the long term context of braid coherence embedded
in the world is chopped up and fractionated, I believe "soul
force" bleeds.

Take a bee queen. She mimics the dance of each worker creating
a complete map to the sweetness/braid in the land in her DNA.
Eventually when the DNA braiding to embedd is perfect, the MAP
AND THE LANDSCAPE BECOME ONE.

Imagine breakfast where you wish to eat of the spin of the
context of the land. You take spelt or quinoa or amaranth, rich
and embedded with true millenia of embedding in the land. You
soak them overnight in spring water in a non metallic charge holding
clay container, in an altar of charge. In the morning you munch
on these. You feel totally stimulated, no need for coffee. No
need for mucous.

Now consider the opposite approach. You take wheat. You
monoculture it for hundreds of generations, so the self-aware
gene is screaming in pain at it's emprisonment. You then hack
up its beautiful contextual DNA so it hass lost all true electrical
mapping of the memory of its catching the charge of the land in
its genes as a map of context. (This is called genetic engineering.)
Then you strip it bare of germ and husk so that most enzymes and
minerals are lost. Then you bleach it so white that rats are too
smart to eat it cause they know it will kill them. Then you store
it in metal so that all life charge is finally gone. Then you
add bad water and form it into something THAT LOOKS LIKE WHOLE
GRAIN (cous cous or ) : PASTA. But it is not. Then you store that
in more metal for more death of spin. Then you add more bad water,
and boil it in the most fractionating microwave.

Then you wonder why your children have no attention span.
Attention is how many waves can nest in one place into stillness.
The fractionating of the "fractality" of our food could
well be the death of us.

Mucous is the report from you body that this food feels
like "not-self".

See "Mucous" as proof of addictions to external
sources of biological fire, home for designer viruses which sort
our DNA for what's worth keeping at: The Archeo-Geometry of America's
Spiritual Destiny:
It is critical to understand why the required inhabiting substrate
for the new virals is mucous
and mucosal linings. Mucous is created quite literally when the
...http://www.goldenmean.info/america
- 74K - 1999-08-17

If we continue to let those WHO DO NOT KNOW WHAT SOUL IS,
hack up the DNA in our childrens food, then those children will
lose their SOUL. I believe this lies in the physics of the braiding
in DNA which responds to charge embedability.
If the discipline of braid within braid which creates soul force
is lost in our food, these will be less hope for our children.

that the original Niburu/Hiburu ANunaki ADAM AND EVE gene
splicing on this planet WAS FOR MORE THAN JUST HACKING UP SOME
NEW BORGS FOR GOLD MINING.

The reason they were eating gold powder (manna/spice/ormes)
to implode their DNA (ringing in YOUR ears).. (and thus needed
TAKadama..-borgs from orion) WAS...

THEY FORGOT HOW TO GET THEIR DNA UP TO SPEED FROM WITHIN.

This required a glandular operation of INVERSION called
COMPASSION.. to act magnetically on the DNA...

from the inside out..

RESULTING in the ideal case... in DNA THAT COULD STEER ITSELF in faster than light.. travel (time penetration,
lucid dreaming, bardo navigating, having soul memory that sustained
thru death... in short the true upstart of the bumper sticker
to the dracos:
GET A SOUL..)

The point being there was a much DEEPER REASON the Annunaki/Orion
contingent had to wander back to a more gravitically fractal (Hopi
called Earth's nexus real estate value of location "Peshmehten"
which became the series: "Deep Space Nine") and thus
fertile enviornment for getting self reference in the DNA up to
speed..

THEY had looked hundreds of years into our future, and seen
whole star systems beginning to fractionate/destabilize due to
the inability of evolved genepools to INHABIT them. Essential,
DNA's magneto force provides the skill to keep megnetic wormholes
re-steering themselves recursively back into their own center.
Thus the CENTERING FORCE we have called GRAVITY IS ACTUALLY THE
cooking soup for self awareness. This is because self-reference
magnetically WHICH CREATES GRAVITY BY MAKING CHARGE INTO A FRACTAL..
(and valence shells recursive and embeddable).. and SELF AWARENESS...
ARE THE SAME THING..

Another more poetic way to understand this, is the Aboriginal
way. Keep squirting your ecstatic gland magnetism down the songline
wormholes, and MAGic your tectonics don't break up. Self awareness
MAKES THE GLUE. This self organizing wave physics engendered by
the skill to EMBED
YOURSELF (the physics of "to inhabit"), was called
"The SUBSTANCE OF WE" feeling. (Sufic: Doris Lessing's
books.)

The local politics noticed that the whole dragon orion contingent
genepool, was now:

-unable to travel in time without heavy metal (very un-cool)

-unable to keep long memory- thru death - soul

-unable to get fertile/sustainable immune system cooked
up in offspring thru thymus radiance..

so they (annunaki/magdalens
dragon blood..) wandered BACKWARDS in time to find the place
where the radiating wave of galactically propagating genetic chaos
ORIGINATED!

They superluminally scanned multiple timeline/event horizons
AND DETERMINED THAT THE SOURCE OF THE EXPLODING GENETIC DISASTER
was THIS 2ND MILLENIA TIMELINE ON EARTH HERE NOW!!!!!!

Specifically, they realized that unless they could prevent
some of the most cutting edge DNA in the galaxy from doing the
stupid mistake OF PREVENTING THEIR OWN DNA FROM BEING FREE....

then whole gene line mag worms across the galaxy PROPAGATING
FROM HERE...

would (to put it VERY simply).. LOSE THE
ABILITY TO STEER.. itself..

The tru gold of galactic commerce is quality DNA. GOLD mining
on Earth and elsewhere (using ADAM/EVE Golem) is just a little
kindergarden primer lesson, in THE PRINCIPLE OF WHAT MAKES DNA
SUSTAINABLE..

However, if you should be so foolish, as to EAT THE GOLD
POWDER as a mechanical way of imploding your DNA.. NOT FROM SELF
EMPOWERMENT... (without doing the COMPASSION work it takes to
sort/embed your OWN
MEMORIES as in preparing to die but living..)

then it is simple... YOU LOSE YOUR SOUL..

because your DNA can't keep making it's own recursion mag
worms back into itself..

BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW BETTER HOW TO MAKE DNA SELF
STEERING..

This in short, is the story of the invention of genetic
engineering, on our planet. Frankenfoods, borg food, clones, etc...
this is the galactic wormwood Cherynobl.. which costs whole genepools
their lives! If those gene splicers who hack up our food's heart
worm, HAVE NO CLUE WHAT
MAKES DNA SUSTAINABLE AS A WAVE BY BRAIDING, then THEY COST
YOU YOUR SOUL.

So the rest of the fairy tale is cute: They set up a hex series
(based on hive mind) of radiant capacitors in a compound called
EDIN (="spaceport")(the garden of eden). (hex fixes,
pent sends). These prevented further biological aging at a cellular
level while they got more gold powder. See the story of "the
golden ones" at http://www.goldenmean.info/origins
Not only was the Hiburu (Niburu priest) alphabet simply the software
tetrahedral vortex symmetry operations necessary to make DNA splices
into a non-re-pent-ant non-imploding tetra helix, the soulless
borg called GOLEM Tak-adams..(Takadama means borg or golem adam
from Orion).. But the entire Sumerian glyph structures were nothing
more than the optical waveguides necessary to focus light into
the right cookie cutters to make sub cellular organelles (see
George Merkel).
This was a planet of gene splicers, pure and simple. But we the
cooked up gene-pool might STING back up the worm. This is the
angelic
agenda..

in order to recapture the SKILL TO MAKE ENOUGH GLANDULAR
PASSION, to learn to braid their own DNA for themselves..

SO OF COURSE..

IF WE AS A CULTURE NOW CHOOSE TO BORG OUR OWN FOOD.. (imagine
what the pissed DNA in ALL the wheat food being fed ALL OF YOUR
CHILDREN is doing to the mag force in the species DNA... my blood
is literally boiling for the tragedy to the children...)

GM WATCH daily
http://www.gmwatch.org
---
It's worth not just reading the main part of this press release
but the
accompanying BRIEFING NOTE, which contains some very interesting
details and comments, including behind the scenes meetings of
scientists and
others that do not seem to have previously been made public.

EXCERPTS:

"We need to change the focus of the debate away from the
limited
studies that have been done to date onto the size of the irreversible
legacy
that we are probably going to leave for future generations."
- Prof
Vyvyan Howard, Professor of Bioimaging, School of Biomedical Sciences,
University of Ulster

"If the kind of detrimental effects seen in animals fed
GM food were
observed in a clinical setting, the use of the product would have
been
halted and further research instigated to determine the cause
and find
possible solutions. However, what we find repeatedly in the case
of GM
food is that both governments and industry plough on ahead with
the
development, endorsement and marketing [of] GM foods despite the
warnings of
potential ill health from animal feeding studies, as if nothing
has
happened. This is to the point where governments and industry
even
seem to
ignore the results of their own research! There is clearly a need
more
than ever before for independent research into the potential ill
effects of GM food including most importantly extensive animal
and human
feeding trials." - Dr Michael Antoniou, Reader in Medical
and Molecular
Genetics, King's College London
---
NEW EVIDENCE OF HARM FROM GM FOOD TRIGGERS CALL FOR IMMEDIATE
BAN

UK Government and EC accused of criminal negligence and willful
suppression of facts

Three new studies of the health effects of GM foods have triggered
fresh demands for GM components in human food and animal feed
to be
banned
immediately, and have also led to accusations of criminal negligence
aimed at the UK Government and European Commission.

The first of the studies, conducted by Russian scientist Irina
Ermakova, showed that an astounding 55% of the offspring of rats
fed
on GM soya
died within three weeks of birth, compared with only 9% in the
control
group (1). The second, conducted by Manuela Malatesta and colleagues
in the Universities of Pavia and Urbino in Italy, showed that
mice fed
on GM soya experienced a slowdown in cellular metabolism and
modifications to liver and pancreas (2). And the third study,
conducted by CSIRO
in Australia, showed that the introduction of genes from a bean
variety
into a GM pea led to the creation of a novel protein which caused
inflammation of the lung tissue of mice (3). So serious was the
damage that
the research was halted, and stocks of the GM pea have been destroyed.
The developers have now made a commitment that the "rogue"
variety will
never be marketed.

These studies, all revealed in the scientific literature within
the
past few weeks, have caused widespread alarm throughout the world,
since
two of them suggest that GM soya (used in a large number of foods)
might
be very dangerous, and since they appear to confirm the findings
of Dr
Arpad Pusztai and Dr Stanley Ewen, whose paper on physiological
changes
in rats fed on GM potatoes caused a worldwide sensation in 1999
(4).
The authors were given the full "shoot the messenger"
treatment; they
were widely vilified by the scientific community, and following
an
intervention from the office of Prime Minister Tony Blair Dr Pusztai
was
sacked, his research team was dismantled, and his funding stopped.
The
Ewen/Pusztai research has never been repeated, let alone extended,
for
fear that their results will also be replicated. And there has
never
been a comprehensive human feeding trial involving GM food.

There is now overwhelming evidence in the literature of deaths
attributable to GM products -- among laboratory and farm animals
and
in the
human population. Some of this evidence is presented below. And
yet the
GM industry, and the UK and EC regulators who are charged with
the
protection of the public, seem to live in a permanent state of
denial
reminiscent of that of the early days of the smoking/health debate.
Despite
opposition from European Member States, the European Commission
appears
to be intent upon issuing one contentious and dangerous GM
authorization after another, and basing its decisions upon highly
selective and
biased research by the applicants themselves, while taking guidance
from a
despised European Food Safety Authority which has lost the confidence
of NGOs and consumer groups across Europe.

Speaking for GM Free Cymru, Dr Brian John said today: "Neither
the UK
government nor the European Commission can pretend any longer
that GM
foods are harmless. They must stop singing from the hymn-sheets
provided for them by the GM industry, and -- not before time --
recognize
that they have a legal duty to protect residents and consumers.
In our
view they are already guilty of criminal negligence and the willful
suppression of facts. There must be no further GM consents, and
GM
foodstuffs must be banned immediately -- at least until such time
that
independent research on animals and humans gives GM a clean bill
of
health
(24). We already know enough to be confident that that will never
happen
(25)."

Professor Malcolm Hooper (20) said: "The genetic modification
to food
is not without danger to the consumer who may be affected by genetic
changes that subsequently lead to serious chronic illnesses (cancer
and
chronic inflammatory disease). Further independent studies, divorced
from any influence of government or corporations, are now imperative
and
urgent."

Prof Vyvyan Howard (21) said: "We need to change the focus
of the
debate away from the limited studies that have been done to date
onto the
size of the irreversible legacy that we are probably going to
leave for
future generations."

ENDS

Contact:
Dr Brian John
GM Free Cymru
Tel 01239-820470

=============================

BRIEFING NOTE

OTHER EVIDENCE OF HARM

In spite of concerted efforts from the GM industry and from
the
political establishment to prevent truly independent research
on the
health
effects of GM food, there is now a mass of information in the
public
domain to demonstrate that such food is potentially dangerous.
We will
never know how many GM varieties have been developed and then
quietly
abandoned before reaching the regulatory process as a result of
deaths or
physiological damage during animal feeding trials, since studies
by
Monsanto, Syngenta and the other GM corporations are conducted
in-house and
under conditions of great secrecy. But we do know of at least
seven
cases where GM varieties have been withdrawn because of direct
evidence
of health damage (5) (6) (7); and there are many instances of
human and
animal deaths arising from GM feeding trials and premature release
onto
the market of GM products (8-12).

In the most deadly case of all, the premature release of the
GM food
supplement L-tryptophan in the USA led to a large number of human
deaths
(estimates range from 39 to well over 100) and to the development
of a
new disease (referred to as eosinophilia myalgia syndrome, or
EMS)
which afflicted up to 10,000 people (8). When StarLink maize
(intended and
only approved for animal fodder) found its way into the US human
food
chain in 2000, there was a massive food scare when it was realized
that
it was potentially capable of triggering severe allergic reactions;
the crop was recalled (far too late), and $9 million had to be
paid out
in compensation (6). People may well have died, but the medical
impact
of the Starlink fiasco is a closely-guarded secret. In Hesse,
Germany, 12 dairy cows died in 2001-2002 after eating GM fodder
maize
Bt176,
which contains the Cry1Ab protein (11). When broiler chickens
were fed
on a diet of Chardon LL (T25) maize, the mortality rate was twice
as
high as that of the control group. That fodder maize variety has
now
been withdrawn. When the infamous Flavr-Savr GM tomato was tested,
7 out
of 40 rats died within two weeks due to necrosis (5). In the case
of
the GM bovine growth hormone known as rBGH or BST Monsanto has
persistently attempted to promote its use in spite of abundant
evidence of
cattle deaths and attributable problems including mastitis (10).
Allergic
reactions among farm workers have been preliminarily linked to
Monsanto
Bt maize and Bt cotton in the Philippines (2004) and India (2005),
respectively (14).

In 2005 Monsanto was heavily criticised across the world for
the
obsessive secrecy with which it sought to keep animal feeding
studies for
MON863 maize out of the public domain (6). The company even insisted
on a
"gagging order" on Dr Arpad Pusztai, the scientist retained
by the
German Government to assess the scientific dossier submitted with
the
Monsanto authorization application to the EU. The study found
"statistically significant" differences to kidney weights
and certain
blood
parameters in the rats fed on the GM maize as compared with the
control
groups, and a number of scientists across Europe who saw the study
(and
heavily-censored summaries of it) expressed concerns about the
health and
safety implications if MON863 should ever enter the food chain.
There
was particular concern in France, where Prof Gilles-Eric Seralini
of the
University of Caen had been trying (without success) for almost
eighteen months to obtain full disclosure of all documents relating
to
the
MON863 study. At last, it required a resolute campaign from NGOs
and a
German court order to obtain the release of the study, which was
then
revealed to have been highly selective, and carefully designed
to
minimize
negative health effects.

There have still been virtually no studies of the impact of
GM food
consumption on human health. But in one small study, referred
to as the
"Newcastle Feeding Study", showed in 2003 that even
after one small meal
containing a GM soya component, transgenes could transfer out
of GM
food into gut bacteria at detectable levels (15). The study was
commissioned by the FSA in the UK, and that body (which has consistently
promoted the merits of GM food) was so frightened by the implications
of the
result that it has refused absolutely to commission any repeat
or
follow-up studies in spite of a flood of requests from NGOs and
consumer
groups.

A CONSPIRACY OF FALSEHOOD

During the past decade, as the giant biotechnology corporations
have
extended their power base and have taken over the role as the
prime
funders of GM research, politicians worldwide have been happy
to promote
the merits of biotechnology and to believe almost everything fed
to them
by the spin-doctors of Monsanto, Syngenta and other companies.
They
have blindly promoted the interests of these corporations in spite
of
on-going and vociferous opposition from the public -- and from
concerned
NGOs and consumer groups. Public opinion polls consistently show
large
majorities in Europe who are opposed to the use of GMOs in food
supplies. Independent scientists who have had the temerity to
question the
objectivity of studies submitted with applications for GM approvals,
or
who have themselves published "uncomfortable" research,
have been
victimised, marginalised and "warned off" further involvement
with
community
groups. The conclusion is inescapable that the British Government,
and
the EC, subscribe to a corrupt scientific system which is based
upon
the following contract: "we tell you in advance what the
result is, and
you will be paid to get on with your work and provide us with
the
evidence we need".

For at least ten years the industry has consistently peddled
the line
that nobody has ever died or even been harmed as a result of consuming
GM products. That is a lie, and it is still a lie if it is repeated
a
thousand times. These are typical reproductions of the lie:

Eliott Morley, Environment Minister: "In terms of existing
products
there has never been any indication that there is a health risk."
Dr Christopher Preston: "Many studies have been published
since 2002
and all have reported no negative impact of feeding GM feed to
the test
species."
http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/articles/biotech-art/peer-reviewed-pubs.html
CSIRO plant industry deputy director T. J. Higgins: "People
have been
eating GM food for 10 years and there isn't a single piece of
evidence
that it's any less safe than conventional food."

SIGNS OF PANIC

There are signs that the new studies of damage inflicted by
GM
foodstuffs is spreading panic in the corridors of power. That
is why
representatives of the President of the EC rang up Manuela Malatesta
and her
colleagues in Italy. That is why there is growing mistrust between
the
European Parliament and EFSA, which has a long reputation for
"facilitating GM approvals" instead of protecting the
European public.
That is
why EFSA has been forced to hold a stakeholders meeting (17) and
to
accept a barrage of criticism from NGOs and consumer groups furious
with its
secrecy, its complacency and its easy acceptance of all the evidence
placed before it by Monsanto and other GM corporations (18). That
is why
the FAO organized an invitation-only workshop in its Rome HQ in
October 2005 with 12 invited scientists, in order to assess the
likelihood of
health damage in the general population arising from the spread
of GM
foods. Dr Stanley Ewen, a practicing consultant histopathologist
at
Grampian University Hospital Trust, was invited to give the opening
presentation. He subsequently said: "We laid down a definitive
protocol for
the testing of GM food using animals and, indeed, humans. However,
Dr
Harry Kuiper of the European Food Safety Authority made it quite
clear
that his organisation was content to accept the results of "objective
studies" carried out by the GM companies. I am concerned
that such
objective studies are still only being developed. Additionally,
that the
EFSA will only commission animal experiments if there were serious
molecular differences between the parent protein and the genetically
modified
protein. Then there would seem to be the question of who would
fund
such experiments and where would they be carried out? I firmly
believe
that there continues to be an urgent need for independent animal
and
human testing."

We understand from others present at that meeting that there
was a
consensus that there are many gaps in scientific knowledge, particularly
related to GM health risks, and that new work on such risks must
be
commissioned at the earliest opportunity; but that Dr Kuiper,
on
behalf of
EFSA, effectively refused to sanction such new work and refused
to
commit funding to it. As far as he is concerned, he is blind to
any
ill-effects arising from the consumption of GM foods, and he is
also
content
to continue leading the blind European Commissioners who foolishly
depend on him for guidance.

COMMENTS

Responding to the three new GM studies, and to the avalanche
of new
work demonstrating that GM foods are actually harmful to human
beings and
other animals, Dr Michael Antoniou (22) said: "If the kind
of
detrimental effects seen in animals fed GM food were observed
in a
clinical
setting, the use of the product would have been halted and further
research instigated to determine the cause and find possible solutions.
However, what we find repeatedly in the case of GM food is that
both
governments and industry plough on ahead with the development,
endorsement and
marketing GM foods despite the warnings of potential ill health
from
animal feeding studies, as if nothing has happened. This is to
the point
where governments and industry even seem to ignore the results
of their
own research! There is clearly a need more than ever before for
independent research into the potential ill effects of GM food
including
most importantly extensive animal and human feeding trials."
(24)

Speaking for GM Free Cymru, Dr Brian John said: "With
news of these
three studies, we have come to the inescapable conclusion that
there is
something seriously wrong with GM food. Any averagely intelligent
person must also come to that conclusion. We think that GM soya
is
particularly dangerous. The GM industry, the regulatory authorities
in
Britain and Europe, and the politicians who are supposed to look
after
us,
have been living in a permanent state of denial about GM ever
since Arpad
Pusztai and Stanley Ewen published their Lancet paper in 1999.
If they
persist in the pretence that all is well in the GM garden for
a moment
longer, they will compound their criminal negligence and their
willful
suppression of facts (23). They have already lost the trust of
the
present generation of consumers; if they continue to treat the
protection
of biotechnology multinationals as a greater priority than the
protection of consumer health they will be guilty of a deliberate
and
cynical
betrayal of the interests of future generations. We want nothing
less
than an immediate ban on all GM crops, all GM food and all GM
animal
feed."

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. See Jeffrey Smith: fully referenced article in "Spilling
the
Beans," Oct 2005:
http://www.seedsofdeception.com/utility/showArticle/?objectID=299
The study was a preliminary study and has not yet been peer-reviewed
and published by the author. But her results were so worrying
to
independent scientists that dissemination became imperative.

2. Manuela Malatesta and her colleagues have published five
papers
2002-2004.
http://www.greenplanet.net/Articolo9833.html&prev=/search?q=Manuela+Malatesta&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=G)
Mangiare OGM non fa differenza? Non proprio.......
Abstracts of the papers can be found here:
http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/articles/agbio-articles/GMfeedsafetypapers.html

3. Study conducted by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial
Research Organisation.
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/jafcau/2005/53/i23/abs/jf050594v.html
New Scientist article:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8347

5. The Flavr-Savr tomato was withdrawn in 1996, amid claims
that it
was a commercial failure. So was another variety called Endless
Summer.
But trials of the Flavr-Savr tomato showed there were health concerns
which contributed to the "commercial" decision.
http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/0/80256cad0046ee0c80256d1f005b0ce5?OpenDocument

6. The StarLink maize fiasco occurred in 2000and is well documented.
See also:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/biotechdebacle_updated.php

7. A new GM soya was developed, containing genes from Brazil
nuts
(1996). A novel protein was accidentally created which had the
potential
to affect people with nut allergies -- so the GM soya was withdrawn:
http://www.health24.com/dietnfood/Food_causing_disease/15-737-740,32410.asp

8. As a consequence of the L-tryptophan scandal (1989) there
were c 100
deaths (Jeffrey Smith). See these:
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/utility/showArticle/?ObjectID=283&find=L%2Dtryptophan
www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/L-tryptophan/index.cfm

10. The rBGH bovine growth hormone (BST) has been promoted
globally by
Monsanto in the full knowledge of science showing damage to both
cattle
and those who consume the milk of cows treated with rBGH.
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/utility/showArticle/?ObjectID=193&find=BST

11. The deaths of cattle in Hesse, Germany, have been linked
with
Bt176 maize, but there appear to have been determined efforts
to
"lose" key
scientific information and to attribute the cattle deaths to
mismanagement and other factors.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/CAGMMAD.php

12. Broiler chickens fed on Chardon LL -- the mortality rate
was twice
as high as that of the control group (NB the infamous case of
Prof Alan
Gray of ACRE and the failure of that Committee to examine evidence
placed before it........)
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/appeal.php

14. The work of the Norwegian scientist Terje Traavik and his
colleagues is on-going and has still to be published. But see:
"Filipino
islanders blame GM crop for mystery sickness. Monsanto denies
scientist's
claim that maize may have caused 100 villagers to fall ill"
-- John
Aglionby in Kalyong, southern Philippines, The Guardian, Wednesday
3
March
3, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,1160789,00.html
Allergic reactions and cattle deaths 2005 attributable to Bt cotton
In
India (Madhya Pradesh):
http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=170692&cat=Health

16. Re the Monsanto rat feeding study on MON863 maize, which
the
company was desperate to keep out of the public domain (2004):
http://www.seedsofdeception.com/utility/showArticle/?objectID=221
Genetically Modified Corn Study Reveals Health Damage and Cover-up,
by
Jeffrey M. Smith
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=640430
http://www.efsa.eu.int/science/gmo/gmo_opinions/381_en.html
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5270

17. See this for the Stakeholders Meeting:
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5804

20. Emeritus Professor of Medicinal Chemistry,
School of Sciences, University of Sunderland, UK

21. Professor of Bioimaging, School of Biomedical Sciences,
University
of Ulster, Coleraine campus

22. Reader in Medical and Molecular Genetics, King's College
London

23. The regulatory system for GM crops and foodstuffs is a
disgrace,
and needs to be scrapped and replaced. The GM authorizations process
in
both Europe and the USA is underpinned by the scientifically
nonsensical concept of "substantial equivalence", by
which a cow with
BSE would
be considered to be "substantially equivalent" to one
without. Further,
the authorities depend almost exclusively upon the "science"
submitted
by the biotechnology corporations with their applications, which
is
almost always partial and selective. In other words, it is corrupt.
Again, the regulatory process is designed - quite specifically
- to
facilitate authorizations rather than to protect the consumer.
The
regulatory
bodies themselves are packed with placements from the GM industry
--
people whose very careers depend upon a continuation of the GM
enterprise. The precautionary principle, which is supposed to
underpin the
regulatory process, has now been effectively replaced by the
"anti-precautionary principle", by which GMs are assumed
to be
harmless unless
opponents can prove otherwise, on a variety-specific basis. But
independent
scientists cannot undertake effective research because the genetic
constructs of new GM varieties are closely guarded secrets, and
because
governments will not fund their studies. And finally, in Europe
at
least,
the Commission is more concerned about politics than science,
and is
determined to issue GM authorizations, come hell or high water,
just to
show the Americans and the WTO that there is no GM moratorium
in place.

24. Letters have now gone from GM Free Cymru to the UK Food
Standards
Agency and to the European Food Safety Authority demanding the
initiation of an urgent programme of independent research into
the health
effects of GM food, on the lines discussed at the recent unpublicised
FOA
meeting in Rome. Copies of these letters are available on request.

25. According to a letter received 24.11.05 from Arpad Pusztai,
"A
consistent feature of all the studies done, published or unpublished,
including MON863, indicates major problems with changes in the
immune
status of animals fed on various GM crops/foods, the latest example
of
this
coming from the GM pea research in Australia."

By the
way, have you ever heard of a book called Against the Grain:
Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of your food? If
not, contact me. It's right up your alley. This is the scoop:
Chemical companies are now buying the largest seed companies in
the US and bio-engineering all the seed
to become "resistant" to their herbicides and fungicides.Then,
supposedly, you can spray chemicals in vast quantities with total
impunity. The
"resistance" lies in the fact that the plant actually
"accepts" the chemicals w/o dying itself. Then you eat
it. The possibilities of absolute
catastrophy are real and, once discovered, irreversable. The seeds
reproduce with the new biological makeup. Once it starts you can't
stop it.
And it's starting now - w/o you even knowing about it! These
are the same companies that brought us Agent Orange and DDT. They
weredeemed "safe." Yeah, right. Anyway, you (and every
other person who makes a habit of eating) need to read this book.Beleive
me, it's
scarier than any Steven King novel. Keep up the good work!
Rob

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TROUBLE IN THE GARDEN

Wall Street investors lost confidence in agricultural
biotechnology during 1999.[1,2,3] Agricultural biotechnology is
by no means dead, but investors drove down stock prices of ag
biotech companies during 1999 in a stunning reversal for the
industry. The WALL STREET JOURNAL said Jan. 7, 2000, "With
the
controversy over genetically modified foods spreading across the
globe and taking a toll on the stocks of companies with
agricultural-biotechnology businesses, it's hard to see those
companies as a good investment, even in the long term."[2]

Hardest hit was Monsanto, the St. Louis chemical giant that
had
spent 5 years and billions of dollars morphing itself into a
"life sciences" company, betting its future on biotechnology
in
pharmaceutical drugs and agricultural crops. As the WALL STREET
JOURNAL wrote December 21, 1999, "Billions of dollars later,
that
concept of a unified 'life sciences' company -- using technology
to improve both medicines and foods -- has become an affliction
itself for Monsanto. The crop-biotechnology half of the program
has grown so controversial that Monsanto has agreed to a deal
that is likely not only to push biotech to the back burner, but
also to cost Monsanto its independence. And investors are
reacting harshly."[3]

Monsanto agreed late in 1999 to merge with Pharmacia &
Upjohn,
Inc. and the combined company will be run not from St. Louis but
from Pharmacia headquarters in Peapack, New Jersey. Monsanto's
ag
biotech business will be spun off into a separate company and
as
much as 19.9% of it will be sold.

Two other leaders in ag biotech, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant
Novartis AG, and the Anglo-Swiss drug firm AstroZeneca PLC,
announced during 1999 that they will combine their ag biotech
divisions into one and sell it off, "effectively washing
their
hands of crop biotechnology," the WALL STREET JOURNAL said.[3]

Thus by the end of 1999, ag biotech companies found themselves
in
trouble, worldwide, for the first time. Here is a short list of
reasons why:

** A lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(FDA)
forced the release of government documents showing that FDA
scientists had expressed grave doubts about the safety of
genetically modified foods even as the agency was publicly
declaring such foods "substantially equivalent" to traditional
crops.[4] It seems clear from these documents that the scientific
integrity of the U.S. regulatory system has been compromised for
political purposes, to provide a "fast track" for the
rapid,
large-scale introduction of genetically modified foods.

** The insurance industry has consistently refused to write
policies covering liability for harm caused by genetically
modified organisms. Steven Suppan, research director at the
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) in Minneapolis,
said last June, "It is worth asking what kind of regulatory
system approves for commercialization a technology whose risks
are so undetermined that the products developed from the
technology have not been insur- ed? An intuitive response is that
the U.S. rejection of liability suggests that U.S. agribusiness
and the U.S. government have less confidence than is proclaimed
publicly in the safety of the products approved and in the
integrity of the product review process," Dr. Suppan said.[5]

** A growing body of literature has begun to show that
genetically modified crops are creating new kinds of
environmental problems for farmers, and that genetically modified
crops are exacerbating already-severe economic problems on
American farms.[6]

** Europeans and others overseas have continued to insist that
the safety of genetically modified foods has not been
sufficiently documented and that import of such foods must be
prohibited, or they must be labeled. The doubts expressed by FDA
scientists, and the growing list of economic and environmental
problems are likely to stiffen European resistance to
genetically-modified seeds, crops, and foods.

** It became apparent in 1999 that the public rationale for
promoting genetically modified foods -- that such foods would
"feed the world" -- was based on wishful thinking, not
economics.
It is now clear that U.S. genetically modified crops are too
expensive to "feed the world."[6]

** The rationale for refusing to label genetically modified
foods
came unraveled in 1999 as biotechnology companies began to
announce new crops with special traits (rice with increased
vitamin A, for example). For years, biotech companies, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), and FDA have argued that labeling genetically
modified foods was impossible because it would require food
companies to segregate genetically modified crops from
conventional crops and it simply couldn't be done. All the crops
were mixed together in the grain elevator, so labeling would be
impossible, they said.

This silly and disingenuous argument evaporated in 1999. As
soon
as biotech firms announced specialty foods created by genetic
engineering, the labeling problem miraculously disappeared.
Labeling is suddenly easy -- indeed, required -- because
consumer's can't be expected to pay premium prices for specialty
foods if those foods aren't clearly identifiable on the grocery
shelf.

Polls have shown that more than 80% of American consumers want
genetically modified foods labeled as such. Now that labeling
is
acknowledged as feasible, will the biotech industry, USDA, EPA,
and FDA bend to the public will and start labeling ALL
genetically modified foods? Not on your life. Government and
industry argue with one voice that labeling is not necessary
because genetically modified foods are "substantially equivalent"
to the conventional foods they have replaced. They even say
labeling would be "misleading" because it would imply
that there
are differences between biotech foods and conventional foods.

Federal regulations governing biotech foods are founded on
the
premise that there are no "material differences" between
genetically modified crops and conventional crops. This argument,
it turns out, was thoroughly discredited by FDA scientists before
the regulations were issued.

The FDA spent 1989-1992 developing regulations governing
genetically modified foods for humans and feed for animals. This
was back when President Bush and Vice-President Quayle were
advocating "regulatory relief" for industry.

FDA's rules -- which were announced by Mr. Quayle in 1992 --
allow a biotech company like Monsanto or DuPont to decide for
itself whether its food products are "generally recognized
as
safe" (GRAS). If a company decides that its new genetically
modified corn or soybean or potato or wheat is "generally
recognized as safe" then no safety testing is required before
the
products are introduced into the food supply. FDA said these
rules -- like all their rules -- are based on "sound science."

However, during 1999 a lawsuit filed by the Alliance for
Bio-Integrity in Fairfield, Iowa, forced the FDA to release some
44,000 pages of internal documents for the first time.[4] Among
them was a series of memos from FDA scientists commenting on the
FDA's proposed "substantially equivalent" policy for
biotech
foods.

A key issue is whether "pleiotropic effects" will
occur when new
genes are inserted into plants to give the plants desirable new
traits. Pleiotropy means that more than one change occurs in a
plant as a result of the new gene. For example, a gene that
allows a plant to grow better under drought conditions might also
make the entire plant grow smaller. The smaller size would be
an
unexpected "pleiotropic" effect.

FDA regulations assume that pleiotropic effects will not occur
when new genes are inserted into conventional foods such as corn
or potatoes or wheat or soybeans. Therefore, FDA says,
genetically modified crops are "substantially equivalent"
to
conventional crops.

Internal memos make it abundantly clear that FDA's scientific
staff believes pleiotropic effects will occur when new genes are
inserted into food crops. [In the following quotations, words
inside square brackets have been added for clarity but words
inside normal parentheses were in the original memos.--P.M.]

Commenting on the FDA's proposed biotech regulations in early
1992, Louis Pribyl, an FDA microbiologist, wrote March 6, 1992,
"It reads very pro-industry, especially in the area of unintended
effects.... This is industry's pet idea, namely that there are
no
unintended effects that will raise the FDA's level of concern.
But time and time again, there is no data to backup their
contention, while the scientific literature does contain many
examples of naturally occurring pleiotropic effects. When the
introduction of genes into [a] plant's genome randomly occurs,
as
is the case with the current [genetic modification] technology
(but not traditional breeding), it seems apparent that many
pleiotropic effects will occur," Dr. Pribyl wrote. "Many
of these
effects might not be seen by the breeder [meaning Monsanto or
DuPont or other biotech firm] because of the more or less similar
growing conditions in the limited trials that are performed.
Until more of these experimental plants have a wider
environmental distribution, it would be premature for FDA to
summarily dismiss pleiotropy as is done here," Dr. Pribyl
wrote.

On the same subject, a memo from the Division of Contaminants
Chemistry within FDA's Division of Food Chemistry and Technology
said November 1, 1991, "Pleiotropic effects occur in genetically
engineered plants... at frequencies up to 30%. Most of these
effects can be managed by the subsequent breeding and selection
procedures. Nevertheless, some undesirable effects such as
increased levels of known naturally occurring toxicants,
appearance of new, not previously identified toxicants, increased
capability of concentrating toxic substances from the environment
(e.g., pesticides or heavy metals), and undesirable alterations
in the levels of nutrients may escape breeders' attention unless
genetically engineered plants are evaluated specifically for
these changes. Such evaluations should be performed on a
case-by-case basis, i.e., every transformant should be evaluated
before it enters the marketplace."

Instead of heeding the concerns of its scientific staff, FDA
issued biotech food rules that assume no pleiotropic effects will
occur, therefore no safety testing is required. All biotech foods
are assumed to be safe. The stage was thus set for confidence
in
biotech foods to plummet as soon as word leaked out that the
scientific underpinnings of the regulatory system had been
compromised.

To be continued next week.

==============

[1] I am indebted to Steven Suppan, research director at the
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) in Minneapolis,
who provided me with several brief, thoughtful summaries of the
state of agricultural biotechnology. Contact: ssuppan@iatp.org.
Telephone (612) 870-3413.

[6] Some of this literature is summarized in Charles M. Benbrook,
"World Food System Challenges and Opportunities: GMOs,
Biodiversity, and Lessons From America's Heartland," unpublished
paper presented January 27, 1999, at University of Illinois.
Available in PDF format at http://www.pmac.net/- IWFS.pdf .

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Felt compelled to share some more information on the current
state of genetically modified (GM) foods.

First, some snippets from:

Why Americans are happy to swallow the GM food experiment
By Julian Borger
Saturday February 20, 1999
The Guardian (London)

> More than 50 million acres of US farmland are currently
sown with GM foods.
> Four years ago, that acreage was ZERO. More than 75 per cent
of processed
> foods on sale in the US are now genetically engineered.

>snip<

> the principal cause of this resounding silence is political.

>snip<

> The links between the GM industry and the US government
have been carefully
> cultivated. The dominant corporation in the field, Monsanto,
a $7.5
> billion (#5 billion) giant with 25,000 employees, has covered
all its
> bases, making significant financial contributions to both
Republicans
> and Democrats. It successfully lobbied the Reagan administration
in 1986
> to persuade it that no new legislation was required to regulate
research
> and production of GM foods. Congress was thus kept out of
the argument.
> Monsanto's links with the Clinton presidency are even stronger.
One of
> its board members is Mickey Kantor, the chairman of Mr Clinton's
1992
> presidential campaign and a former chief trade negotiator.
Marcia Hale,
> another former Clinton aide, is the company's international
regulatory
> director.

>snip<

> when the FDA was drawing up guidelines for deciding
> whether GM foods should be labelled, one of the key decision-makers
was
> Michael Taylor, who had hitherto been a lawyer for Monsanto.

>snip<

> The FDA rules mean that even risk-assessment data can
now also be withheld
> as 'confidential business information'. In some states food
companies
> can sue competitors under 'veggie libel' laws, if they label
their
> products as having no genetically-engineered ingredients,
on the basis
> that this might imply superiority to GM products.

This is getting out of hand. Reportedly, 16 states now have
these "veggie
libel" laws.

An estimated 30,000 products on our grocery shelves are now
genetically
engineered. 90% of all soy products in the US are already genetically
nodified
(GM). The only way you can currently ensure that something you
eat is NOT GM,
is to buy organic, since GM foods are not allowed under the current
guidelines.

However, this will not be the case if Monsanto gets what they
want.

They have tried once already, through their links to the FDA,
to modify the
organic guidelines to include GM foods. They failed, but have
vowed to try
again, and again...every three years.

Obviously, if they pass "veggie libel" laws across
the board, we will have NO
way of knowing what we are eating if they also manage to modify
the organic
standards.

end from bob m

As you know, I read over 40 magazines a month - most of them
health oriented,
some of them research and peer-written. I think the following
should be read
and followed through because of the threat that I read in one
of my european
magazines. It seems that the U.S. is requesting a global meaning
of
"organic". Organic food as we know it today has seen
an increase of over 20%
in the last year. Naturally, the large company growers are hurting
over this.
The proposal? That anything "grown or alive" is really
organic! This would
mean that chemically grown or altered food could be listed as
organic, or meat
that has been shot with antibiotics or hormones would be considered
organic.
The problem? They are requesting that it be established as the
highest
standard and a portion of the bill says that real organic farmers
would NOT be
allowed to call their product anything else to differentiate it
from the "new"
organic. On top of this, there is a portion that says this will
be the
highest acceptable standard and no one has the right to overstep
these
standards. The UK magazine was outraged and calling for support
to defeat the
U.S. bill.

Please read the following, act, and forward the information
on to interested
people!

CNN is conducting a poll on whether you would eat genetically
engineered food. All you have to do is click "yes" or
"no"-- it takes two
seconds.
Please vote!

Just click on the link below (or copy it to the address bar
of your Internet
Browser):

Re: genetically altered food: It is quite amazing how "The
Brains"behind genetically altered food operate. When Adrienne
went to India she stayed with a plant scientist. From his point
of view they were increasing the food supply - but he recognised
the vicious circle that was being created in that the peasant
- who normally grew his own seed - was now being forced to buy
"good seed" - and this worked in such a way that the
rich farmer got richer and the poor farmer got poorer.... along
with THE LAND. winifred.

W and M, This posting I got set the bells off in my head. Especially
after our talk with M last night. The Omega must really be scared
to do this. But what better way to control people than to have
complete control over the entire World food supply. And with their
herbacide, they can wipe out everything but crops grown with their
seeds. LOVE (Let Omega Violations End) Dolphin Boy

> theldar@ix.netcom.com writes: *Monsanto's ad campaign..."all-out
war" over the control of the world's food supply.*

*Monsanto has suggested that within a few years all the major
staple crops on Earth should be genetically engineered.*

*Monsanto already sells the world's most popular herbicide,
and sells seeds designed exclusively to go with that herbicide.*

Some have called Monsanto's ad campaign, and the grass-roots
resistance that has responded to it, an "all-out war"
over the control of the world's food supply.

The Monsanto ads - which have included three full pages in
a single issue of the prestigious Financial Times of London -include
endorsements from a few prominent African politicians.

Titled "Let the Harvest Begin," these ads attempt
to equate the elimination of world hunger to the acceptance of
Monsanto's genetic technology. "We all share the same planet
- and the same needs. In agriculture, many of our needs have an
ally in biotechnology and the promising advances it offers for
our future. With these advances, we prosper; without them, we
cannot thrive ... Slowing [biotechnology's] acceptance is a luxury
our hungry world cannot afford."

Such rhetoric has been met with passionate opposition. Senior
African politicians, scientists and agriculturists have drawn
the proverbial line in the sand, organizing themselves to combat
the enormous resources of one of the world's largest corporations.

A counter-attack by UN delegates representing every African
nation save South Africa lambasted the Monsanto ads with this
joint statement:

"We strongly object that the image of the poor and hungry
from our countries is being used by giant multinational corporations
to push a technology that is neither safe, environmentally friendly,
nor economically beneficial to us."

The delegates also accused Monsanto of threatening and jailing"
U.S. farmers who save seeds and denounced its "interest"in
the environment. "[Monsanto's] major focus is not to protect
the environment," the African UN representatives stated,
"but to develop crops that can resist higher doses of its
best-selling pesticide," the delegates claimed.

A few months ago I wrote in this column about the ominous repercussions
of Monsanto's acquisition of a patent for the technique known
as "terminator technology" - a genetic modification
process used to engineer crops so they cannot reproduce. Such
a plant forces growers to buy their seeds anew before each growing
season - resulting in higher profits and an escalating market
share of the world seed market for Monsanto.

Since I first wrote about the dangers of "terminator"
technology breaking the natural 12,000-year-old farming practice
of saving, sharing and cross-breeding seeds to adapt food crops
to constantly changing conditions, Monsanto has moved rapidly
to attain their stated goal of "providing better food, better
nutrition, and better health for all people."

Monsanto has announced plans to develop "terminator"
seed strains for nearly every harvestable crop and institute their
usage worldwide. Its European ad campaign is just the latest move
in the aggressive pursuit of that objective.

On June 29 Monsanto paid $1.4 billion to purchase international
seed operations in Europe, Asia, Africa, Central and Latin America
from Cargill -the world's largest grain and oilseed trader. And
Monsanto has suggested that within a few years all the major staple
crops on Earth should be genetically engineered.

>

> > These new products are very attractive to small >
> farmers

made desperate by the growth of > > agri-businesses.
High-powered

lawyers get these > > farmers to sign away the future
rights to the

> > seeds they grow, and to allow Monsanto inspectors
> > to peruse

their fields whenever they want.

>

> > Monsanto already sells the world's most popular >
> herbicide,

and sells seeds designed exclusively to > > go with that
herbicide.

>

> > It now owns the U.S. patent on all genetic > >
manipulations of

cotton, and

> > controls 35 percent of the germlines of American
> > corn.

>

> > Monsanto has managed to become one of a tiny >
> handful of

companies that control the world seed > > market.

>

> > And as Monsanto continues its campaign to > >

indoctrinate the European public on the integral > >
nature of

genetic modification, it will be > > difficult to combat
the

$1.6 billion media-blitz.

>

> > Monsanto and its directors - including former >
> top-level

U.S. government officials - have already > > succeeded
in lobbying

the European Commission to

> > force some countries to repeal their laws banning
> > the import

of genetically engineered corn.

>

> > Field tests have discovered that Monsanto's >
> rapeseed

plants are causing "biological pollution" > >
by spreading their

mutant DNA characteristics to

> > neighboring plants and killing vital pollinators
> > like honey

bees and ladybugs.

>

> > Many scientists believe that Monsanto's terminator
> > seed

could do to an ecosystem what viruses like > > Ebola
can do the human

biosystem.

>

> > Regardless of whether or not Monsanto succeeds in
> > conquering

the minds of Europe with its dubious > > claims, one
thing is

certain: The way the world > > feeds itself will never
be the same

again.

> >

> > copyright The St. Petersburg Times 1998

7/25/98

below from

http://grateful.dead.net/special_events/index.html

SEED GERMINATION OR TERMINATION

New Scientist, March 28, 1998

They call it "terminator technology", a "breakthrough"
in genetic

engineering. It is the seed that doesn't germinate. If adopted,
it

means that the tradition of saving seeds from one crop for
the next

season's planting will disappear.

In early March 1998, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
and a

Mississippi seed company, the Delta and Pine Land Company,
were granted

a patent for a technique that can sterilize the seeds produced
by most

agriculture crops.

They expect the technology to be adopted by all the major seed
companies

which for many years have been looking for ways to prevent
farmers from

recycling seeds from their crops.

Willard Phelps, a spokesman for the USDA, predicts the new
technique

will soon be so widely adopted that farmers will only be able
to buy

seeds that cannot be regerminated.

------------------------------

SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION IN MONSANTO CONSPIRACY

Reported by George Monbiot in The Sydney Morning Herald,

20 September 1997

Monsanto, that company that health and freedom activists love
to hate,

has embarked on one of the most extraordinary and ambitious
corporate

strategies ever launched. The story begins with a single chemical,

glyphosate. Sold to farmers and gardeners as "Roundup",
it is the

world's biggest selling herbicide, earning more than $2 billion
last

year alone. The company's patent on Roundup runs out in 2000,
but far

from sowing corporate catastrophe, this event seems likely
to enhance

Monsanto's market value.

For the past 10 years it has cleverly been developing a range
of new crops,

genetically engineered to resist glyphosate. Spraying with
Roundup does not

harm these crops, but destroys all the weeds that compete.
New patent

legislation in Europe and the U.S. allows Monsanto to secure
exclusive rights

A new book by Marc Lappe and Britt Bailey, AGAINST THE GRAIN,
makes it clear that genetic engineering is revolutionizing U.S.
agriculture almost overnight.[1]

In 1997, 15% of the U.S. soybean crop was grown from genetically
engineered seed. By next year, if Monsanto Corporation's
timetable unfolds on schedule, 100% of the U.S. soybean crop (60
million acres) will be genetically engineered.[1,pg.5] The same
revolution is occurring, at the same pace, in cotton. Corn,
potatoes, tomatoes and other food crops are lagging slightly
behind but, compared to traditional rates of change in farming,
they are being deployed into the global ecosystem at blinding
speed.

The mass media have largely maintained silence about the genetic
engineering revolution in agriculture, and government regulators
have imposed no labeling requirements, so the public has little
or no knowledge that genetically altered foods are already being
sold in grocery stores everywhere, and that soon few traditional
forms of food may remain on the shelves.

Genetic engineering is the process whereby genes of one species
are implanted in another species, to give new traits to the
recipient. Traditionally the movement of genes has only been
possible between closely-related species. Under the natural
order established by the Creator, there was no way dog genes
could get into cats. Now, however, genetic engineering allows
scientists to play God, removing genes from a trout or a
mosquito and implanting them in a tomato, for better or for
worse.

Three federal agencies regulate genetically-engineered crops and
foods -- the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA). The heads of all three agencies are on
record with speeches that make them sound remarkably like
cheerleaders for genetic engineering, rather than impartial
judges of a novel and powerful new technology, and all three
agencies have set policies that:

** No public records need be kept of which farms are using
genetically-engineered seeds;

** Companies that buy from farmers and sell to food
manufacturers and grocery chains do not need to keep
genetically-engineered crops separate from traditional crops,
so
purchasers have no way to avoid purchasing genetically
engineered foods;

** No one needs to label any crops, or any food products, with
information about their genetically engineered origins, so
consumers have no way to exercise informed choice in the grocery
store. In the U.S., every food carries a label listing its
important ingredients, with the remarkable exception of
genetically engineered foods.

These policies have two main effects:

(1) they have kept the public in the dark about the rapid spread
of genetically engineered foods onto the family dinner table,
and

(2) they will prevent epidemiologists from being able to trace
health effects, should any appear, because no one will know who
has been exposed to novel gene products and who has not.

By next year, if Monsanto's plans develop on schedule -- and
there is no reason to think they won't -- 100% of the U.S.
soybean crop will be genetically engineered. Eighty percent of
all the vegetable oils in American foods are derived from soy
beans, so most foods that contain vegetable oils will contain
genetically engineered components by next year or the year
after.[1,pg.52]

It is safe to say that never before in the history of the world
has such a rapid and large-scale revolution occurred in a
nation's food supply. And not just the U.S. is targeted for
change. The genetic engineering companies (all of whom used to
be
chemical companies) -- Dow, DuPont, Novartis, and preeminently,
Monsanto -- are aggressively promoting their genetically
engineered seeds in Europe, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, India,
China and elsewhere. Huge opposition has developed to Monsanto's
technology everywhere it has been introduced outside the United
States. Only in the U.S. has the "agbiotech" revolution
been
greeted with a dazed silence.

Monsanto -- the clear leader in genetically engineered crops --
argues that genetic engineering is necessary (nay, ESSENTIAL)
if
the world's food supply is to keep up with human population
growth. Without genetic engineering, billions will starve,
Monsanto says. However, neither Monsanto nor any of the other
genetic engineering companies appears to be developing
genetically engineered crops that might solve global food
shortages. Quite the opposite.

If genetically engineered crops were aimed at feeding the
hungry, then Monsanto and the others would be developing seeds
with certain predictable characteristics: (a) ability to grow
on
substandard or marginal soils; (b) plants able to produce more
high-quality protein, with increased per-acre yield, without
increasing the need for expensive machinery, chemicals,
fertilizers, or water; (c) they would aim to favor small farms
over larger farms; (d) the seeds would be cheap and freely
available without restrictive licensing; and (e) they would be
for crops that feed people, not meat animals.

None of the genetically engineered crops now available, or in
development (to the extent that these have been announced) has
any of these desirable characteristics. Quite the opposite. The
new genetically engineered seeds require high-quality soils,
enormous investment in machinery, and increased use of
chemicals. There is evidence that their per-acre yields are
about 10% lower than traditional varieties (at least in the case
of soybeans),[1,pg.84] and they produce crops largely intended
as feed for meat animals, not to provide protein for people. The
genetic engineering revolution has nothing to do with feeding
the world's hungry.

The plain fact is that fully two-thirds of the genetically
engineered crops now available, or in development, are designed
specifically to increase the sale of pesticides produced by the
companies that are selling the genetically engineered
seeds.[1,pg.55] For example, Monsanto is selling a line of
"Roundup Ready" products that has been genetically engineered
to
withstand heavy doses of Monsanto's all-time top money-making
herbicide, Roundup (glyphosate). A Roundup Ready crop of
soybeans can withstand a torrent of Roundup that kills any weeds
competing with the crop. The farmer gains a $20 per acre
cost-saving (compared to older techniques that relied on lesser
quantities of more expensive chemicals), but the ecosystem
receives much more Roundup than formerly. To make Roundup Ready
technology legal, EPA had to accommodate Monsanto by tripling
the allowable residues of Roundup that can remain on the
crop.[1,pg.75] Monsanto's patent on Roundup runs out in
the
year
2000, but any farmer who adopts Roundup Ready seeds must agree
to buy only Monsanto's brand of Roundup herbicide. Thus
Monsanto's patent monopoly on Roundup is effectively extended
into the foreseeable future -- a shrewd business maneuver if
there ever was one. However, this should not be confused with
feeding the world's hungry. It is selling more of Monsanto's
chemicals and filling the corporate coffers, which is what it
was intended to do. "Feeding the hungry" is a sales
gimmick, not
a reality.

Monsanto's other major line of genetically engineered crops
contains the gene from a natural pesticide called Bt. Bt is a
naturally-occurring soil organism that kills many kinds of
caterpillars that like to eat the leaves of crops. Bt is the
pesticide of choice in low-chemical-use farming, IPM [integrated
pest management] and organic farming. Farmers who try to
minimize their use of synthetic chemical pesticides rely on an
occasional dusting with Bt to prevent a crop from being overrun
with leaf-eating caterpillars. To them, Bt is a God-send, a
miracle of nature.

Monsanto has taken the Bt gene and engineered it into cotton,
corn and potatoes. Every cell of every plant contains the Bt
gene and thus produces the Bt toxin. It is like dusting the crop
heavily with Bt, day after day after day. The result is entirely
predictable, and not in dispute. When insect pests eat any part
of these crops, the only insects that will survive are those
that are (a) resistant to the Bt toxin, or (b) change their diet
to prefer other plants to eat, thus disrupting the local
ecosystem and perhaps harming a neighboring farmer's crops.

According to Dow Chemical scientists who are marketing their own
line of Bt-containing crops, within 10 years Bt will have lost
its usefulness because so many insects will have developed
resistance to its toxin.[1,pg.70] Thus Monsanto and Dow
are
profiting bountifully in the short term, while destroying the
usefulness of the one natural pesticide that undergirds the
low-pesticide approach of IPM and organic farming. It is another
brilliant -- if utterly ruthless and antisocial -- Monsanto
business plan.

Ultimately, for sustainability and long-term maximum yield,
agricultural ecosystems must become diversified once again. This
is the key idea underlying organic farming. Monoculture cropping
-- growing acre upon acre of the same crop -- is the antithesis
of sustainability because monocultures are fragile and unstable,
subject to insect swarms, drought, and blight. Monocultures can
only be sustained by intensive, expensive inputs of water,
energy, chemicals, and machinery. Slowly over the past two
decades, the movement toward IPM and organic farming has begun
to take hold in this country -- despite opposition from the
federal government, from the chemical companies, from the banks
that make farm loans, and from the corporations that sell
insurance. Now comes the genetic engineering revolution, which
is dragging U.S. agriculture back down the old path toward vast
monocultures, heavy reliance on machinery, energy, water, and
chemicals, all of which favors the huge farm over the small
family operation. It is precisely the wrong direction to be
taking agricultural technology in the late 20th century, if the
goals are long-term maximum yield, food security, and
sustainability.

It is a wrong direction for another reason as well.

When 100% of the soybeans in the U.S. are grown from Roundup
Ready seed -- next year -- then 100% of America's soybean
farmers- will be dependent upon a single supplier for all their
seed and
the chemicals needed to allow those seeds to thrive. In sum,
Monsanto will have achieved a monopoly on a fundamental food
crop. It is clear that Monsanto's goal is a similar monopoly on
every major food crop here and abroad. If something doesn't
change soon, it is safe to predict that a small number of "life
science" corporations (as they like to call themselves) --
the
majority of them American and the remainder European -- will
have
a monopoly on the seed needed to raise all of the world's major
food crops. Then the hungry, like the well-fed, will have to pay
the corporate owners of this new technology for permission to
eat.

The corporations that are introducing genetically modified crops
into the global ecosystem want you to think of genetic
engineering as a well-understood science similar to laparascopic
surgery. Indeed, the phrase "genetic engineering" gives
the
impression that moving genes from one organism to another is as
straightforward as designing a rocket or a TV set. This is not
the case.

Basically, a plant's genome (all of its genes, taken together)
is a black box. Genetic engineering takes a gene from one black
box and forces it into a second black box (the recipient plant),
hoping that the new gene will "take." Most of the time,
the
experiment fails.[1] Once in a few thousand tries, the foreign
gene embeds itself in the recipient plant's genome and the
newly-modified plant gains the desired trait. But that is all
the technicians know. They have no idea where in the receiving
plant's genome the new gene has found a home. This fundamental
ignorance, combined with the speed and scale at which modified
organisms are being released into the global ecosystem, raises
a
host of questions of safety for the future of agriculture, for
the environment, and for human health.

** To begin with, genes don't necessarily control a single
trait. A gene may control several different traits in a plant.
Without careful study, plants with undesirable characteristics
may be released into the global ecosystem. And biotechnology is
not like a chemical spill that can be mopped up -- once you
release a new gene sequence into nature, your grandchildren are
going to be living with it because there's no taking it back.

** How a gene affects a plant depends upon the environment. The
same gene can have different effects, depending on the
environment in which the new plant is growing.[2] What appears
predictable and safe after a few years of observation of a small
test plot may turn out to have quite different consequences when
introduced into millions of acres of croplands in the U.S. and
elsewhere, where conditions vary widely.

** Does the new gene destabilize the entire plant genome in some
unforeseen way, leading one day to problems in that crop? Only
time will tell.

** Genes can travel to nearby, related plants on their own. This
is called gene flow. In 1996 gene flow was discovered to be much
more common that previously thought.[3]

According to SCIENCE magazine, many ecologists say it is only
a
matter of time before an engineered gene makes the leap to a
weedy species, this creating a new weed or invigorating an old
one. "It will probably happen in far less than 1% of the
products," warns ecological geneticist Norm Ellstrand of
the
University of California at Riverside, "but within 10 years
we
will have a moderate-to-large scale ecological or economic
catastrophe, because there will be so many [genetically
modified] products being released,"[3] Ellstrand predicts.
It is
worth noting that U.S. farmers already spend $4.3 billion
purchasing 628 million pounds of herbicides (active ingredients
only) to control weeds.[4,pg.32]

The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA)
recommended that all genetically modified plants should be
considered non-indigenous exotic species, with the power to
disrupt ecosystems.[4,pg.29] Non-indigenous, introduced species
have provided great benefits to humanity (most of U.S.
agriculture relies on introduced species), but we also should
learn from kudzu, purple loosestrife, the gypsy moth, the fire
ant, and the boll weevil that exotic species can be extremely
disruptive and very expensive to control (if indeed they can be
controlled at all).

** A public health disaster was narrowly averted in 1996 when
a
group of researchers tried to improve soybeans by giving them
a
gene from the Brazil nut.[5] The goal was to improve the
nutritional value of soybeans by forcing them to produce more
methionine, an essential amino acid. The gene from the Brazil
nut was successfully transferred to soybeans. After this had
been accomplished, but before the soybeans were sold
commercially, independent researchers tested the soybeans to see
if it would cause allergic reactions in people. Many people are
allergic to nuts, particularly Brazil nuts. In some people,
allergic reaction to Brazil nuts is swift and fatal.

A series of laboratory tests on humans confirmed that the
genetically modified soybeans did provoke Brazil-nut allergy in
humans. They could not feed the genetically modified soybeans
to
people for fear of killing them, but through scratch tests on
skin, they confirmed unequivocally that people allergic to
Brazil nuts were allergic to the modified soybeans. In
discussing their findings in the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF
MEDICINE, the researchers pointed out that tests on laboratory
animals will not necessarily discover allergic reactions to
genetically modified organisms. Only tests on humans will
suffice.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only requires testing
for allergic reactions if a gene is being taken from a source
that is already known to cause allergic reactions in humans.
Many genes are being taken now from bacteria and other
life-forms whose allergenicity is entirely unknown, so federal
regulations require no allergy testing in these cases. This
reduces regulatory costs for the corporations, but leaves the
public unprotected.

** Crops are being genetically modified chiefly as a way to sell
more pesticides. [See REHW #637.] In some cases, the modified
crops change the pesticides themselves, giving them new
toxicity. The herbicide bromoxynil falls into this
category.[1,pg.41] Bromoxynil is already recognized by U.S. EPA
[Environmental Protection Agency] as a possible carcinogen and
as a teratogen (i.e., it causes birth defects). Calgene (now
owned by Monsanto) developed a strain of cotton plants (called
BXN Cotton) that can withstand direct spraying with bromoxynil.
Unfortunately, the bromoxynil-resistant gene in cotton modifies
the bromoxynil, turning it into a chemical byproduct called
DBHA, which is at least as toxic as bromoxynil itself.

Although humans do not eat cotton, traditional silage for cattle
contains up to 50% cotton slash, gin mill leavings, and cotton
debris. Both bromoxynil and DBHA are fat-soluble, so they can
accumulate in the fat of animals. Therefore, it is likely that
DBHA will make its way into the human food chain through meat.
Furthermore, cotton seed oil is widely used as a direct human
food and as a cooking additive. In licensing bromoxynil for use
on Monsanto's genetically modified BXN Cotton, EPA conducted a
risk assessment that assumed bromoxynil and DBHA had no way to
enter the human food chain. Lastly, cotton dust -- the cause of
brown lung disease -- will now carry the added hazard of
bromoxynil and DBHA, another danger that EPA has disregarded.
Thus genetic engineering -- which is being promoted as a
technology that will reduce the perils of pesticides -- will in
some instances increase them.

In rats and in rabbits, bromoxynil causes serious birth defects,
including changes in the bones of the spine and skull, and
hydrocephaly ("water on the brain"). These birth defects
appear
in offspring at doses of bromoxynil that are not toxic to the
mother. Despite these findings, and despite a law (the Food
Quality Protection Act of 1996) that explicity gives EPA the
power to reduce exposure standards to protect infants, EPA in
1997 declined to require a special safety factor to protect
children from bromoxynil.

Lastly, when EPA added up the cancer-causing potential of
bromoxynil, they found it to be 2.7 per million, and they
promptly declared this to be "well within" the one-in-a-million
regulatory limit.[1,pg.46] Is 2.7 less than one?

By all appearances, EPA is more interested in protecting
Monsanto's investment in this new technology than in protecting
public health.

** Because genetically-engineered soybeans will be doused with
increased quantities of herbicides, such as Roundup
(glyphosate), soybeans and soy products will carry increased
chemical residues. Infants who must be reared on soy milk,
because they cannot tolerate lactose in regular milk, will be
at
special hazard.

** Crops that are genetically modified to resist herbicides
detoxify the herbicides by producing proteins, which will be
incorporated into our food with unknown results.[1,pg.143]

** When crops are genetically modified to incorporate the
naturally-occurring Bt toxin into their cells (see REHW #636),
those Bt toxins will be incorporated into foods made from those
crops. What will be the effect of these toxins and gene products
on the bacteria and other organisms (the so-called microflora)
that live in the human digestive tract? Time will tell.

** The "life sciences" companies have big plans for
turning
agricultural crops into "factories" for producing
pharmaceuticals and specialty chemicals in open fields. They
plan to manufacture vaccines, drugs, detergents, enzymes and
other chemicals by putting the right genes into the right
plants.

The net effect of all this will be to expose soil insects and
microorganisms, foraging and burrowing animals, seed-eating
birds, and a myriad of other non-target organisms to these
chemicals and to the gene products that make them. The Union of
Concerned Scientists says, "Herbivores will consume the
chemicals as they feed on plants. Soil microbes, insects, and
worms will be exposed as they degrade plant debris. Aquatic
organisms will confront the drugs and chemicals washed into
streams, lakes, and rivers from fields."[4,pg.6]

** Most fundamentally, genetically-engineered crops substitute
human wisdom for the wisdom of nature. As genetically-engineered
crops are planted on tens of millions of acres, the diversity
of
our agricultural systems is being further diminished. Do we know
enough to select the "right" combination of genes to
assure the
stable, long-term yield of our agricultural systems? Our recent
experiences with PCBs, CFCs, DDT, Agent Orange, and global
warming should give us pause. Genetic engineering is by far the
most powerful technology humans have ever discovered, and it is
being deployed by the same corporations that, historically, have
produced one large-scale calamity after another. Is there any
good reason to think things will be different this time?

Curiously, I received not a single feedback on my recent February
26 post
focussed mainly against BIOTECHNOLOGY AND THE CORPORATE TAKEOVER
OF OUR
FOOD (now posted on my website (URL below) under the link named
Stop
Genetically Engineered "Frankenfoods").

Now I've put together a comprehensive review on the subject
of genetically
modified foods which should add some much needed fuel to your
reflection on
this crucial issue. Europeans are strongly opposing this terrible
scourge
while there has been little reactions here in America thanks mainly
to the
silence from the media on this. It is most likely that you already
and
unknowingly eat some of those Frankenfoods and that can be very
dangerous
for your health as you'll see below. And these plants can also
wreak havoc
in the environment. It is a time bomb waiting to explode.

NOTE: I also have another email that I'll send you shortly
-- to be
entitled "About Fear, the Elite, Local Currencies and much
much more" and
I'm also tracking a "humongous situation" now developing
in the US with
potential implications for the rest of the world, but I've still
not made
up my mind as to the reality of it all. So stay tuned!

LONDON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Twenty international scientists
on
Friday urged more research into genetically modified foods and
demanded the reinstatement of a British researcher who found
that rats fed on GM potatoes suffered a weakened immune system.

Arpad Pusztai was last year forced to retire from the prestigious
Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland two days after giving a
television interview in which he said it was ``very, very unfair
to use our fellow citizens as guinea pigs.''

He was accused of having presented provisional data to the
public without it having been reviewed by fellow scientists.

The Guardian newspaper published the names of scientists from
Britain, other European countries, the United States and Canada
who had signed a public statement in support of Pusztai.

They say they have examined all the published data and concluded
that Pusztai was right to be concerned about the effect on rats,
which after 10 days of feeding trials showed signs of harm to
their kidneys, thymuses, spleens and guts.

They call for further research to establish the risks of
allowing GM crops to be used in foodstuffs.

One of them, Vyvyan Howard, from Britain's Liverpool University,
said Pusztai's findings should have a massive effect on the
world's burgeoning biotechnology industry.

``We are going to have to test these plants rather like pharmaceutical
agents,'' he told BBC radio.

Howard pointed out that it could cost some $400 million to
bring a new drug to the market, largely because of the amount
of
testing needed to guard against side effects.

Left wing Labour MP Allan Simpson called for a moratorium on
the
use of GM crops while further research was done.

``If we don't want a BSE Mark Two, then we ought to put a halt
to
the whole process,'' he said. A mad cow disease, or Bovine
Spongiform Encephalopathy, epidemic has produced a crisis in
Britain's beef industry and resulted in 35 human deaths.

Jack Cunningham, a former agriculture minister who is now in
charge
of the presentation of government policy, said GM foods were not
grown commercially in Britain at present and to stop the growing
of experimental crops would be counter-productive.

``A moratorium on the experimental work is neither necessary
nor
sensible in the circumstances,'' he said.

Cunningham said the government was planning to make labelling
of genetically modified foods compulsory.

An opinion poll showed that 31 percent of Britons believe that
GM food poses a health risk to their families and 53 percent
wanted more statutory controls on them.

"If the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (CaMV) is confirmed as
being hazardous
to mammals, this could literally become the "Chernobyl of
Biotech" -- since
Roundup Ready soybeans, Bt corn, and most other GE crops are produced
using the CaMV as a genetic splicing vector."

Dan Verakis, Monsanto PR spokesman in the U.K., quoted in the
London
Observer 2/21/99.

"Tony, Don't Swallow Bill's Seed."

Greenpeace banner on their delivery truck Feb. 18 in London
as they dumped
four tons of US GE-tainted soybeans on the front steps of #10
Downing
Street, Prime Minister Tony Blair's official residence.

In what the Financial Times of London characterized on Feb.
23 as a "public
relations disaster for transgenic foods," global resistance
to Monsanto and
genetic engineering (GE) has sharply intensified over the past
60 days. As
reported previously in Food Bytes (#13 #15 ), the international
anti-GE
movement is rapidly developing into a serious threat to Monsanto
and other
biotechnology titans.

The growing crisis over gene-foods has reached the point where
financial
analysts are warning the Clinton administration that the European
Union
will not back off on efforts to label untested GE foods. Many
believe this
controversy could spawn a major trade war within the World Trade
Organization (WTO). In Britain commentators have similarly warned
Prime
Minister Tony Blair that his cozy relationship with Bill Clinton
and Bill's
favorite corporation, Monsanto, could do severe damage to Blair.

It has been a rough last several months for Monsanto and the
ag biotech
special interests. Here is a chronological blow by blow account:

* The Fall/Winter 1998 issue of the Union of Concerned Scientists'
Gene
Exchange <www.ucsusa.org> warns of recent US research showing
that
genetically engineered Bt crops are building up Bt toxins in the
soil,
thereby damaging the soil food web and harming beneficial insects.

* On December 15, 1998 attorneys from the Center for Food Safety,
on behalf
of a broad coalition, filed a legal petition in Washington, D.C.
against
the FDA to have rBGH taken off the market. The legal action received
major
attention from the mass media, including a widely-viewed segment
on ABC TV
national news. The CFS petition cites mounting evidence that the
original
testing of rBGH was flawed. In 1990 the FDA said BGH was "safe
for human
consumption." Part of its findings were based on 90-day rat
feeding studies
in which they reported "no toxicologically significant changes..."
Based
largely on this conclusion, FDA did not require human toxicological
tests
usually required for a veterinary drug. However in April of 1998,
researchers from Health Canada, the Canadian equivalent to FDA,
issued a
report which contradicted FDA's findings. Canadian researchers
found
studies showing that rats were absorbing rBGH after all. In fact,
between
20 and 30 percent of the rats were developing distinct immunological
reactions. Additionally, cysts formed in the thyroid of some male
rats and
infiltrated the prostate--both warning signs for potential cancer
hazards.

"These are toxicologically significant changes in the
rats and they should
have triggered a full human health review, including assessment
of
potential carcinogenic and immunological effects," said Dr.
Michael Hansen,
an expert on rBGH and a scientist with the Consumer Policy Institute,
a
division of Consumers Union. According to CFS attorneys it is
"unclear" how
or why these results were overlooked in the original FDA review
of rBGH.

Monsanto says it submitted the studies to the FDA, while the
agency says it
only saw summaries of the rat tests.

"We're going to go to the courts and say--you were lied
to," said Andrew

Kimbrell, lead counsel for the CFS. "Essentially it was
fraud by the agency
and fraud by Monsanto in telling the court that there were no
human health
effects possible from consuming these products made with rBGH
treated
milk." The EU has already banned rBGH, but this policy comes
up for review
later this year. The US government has warned that they will file
for
damages under the WTO if the EU continues to ban Monsanto's rBGH.

* Australian trade authorities announced on Jan. 8, the largest
shipment of
canola (rapeseed) ever exported from Australia. The $16.5 million
dollar
shipment is bound for oilseed crushing plants in Europe. According
to
Graham Lawrence, managing director of the New South Wales Grains
Board,
"Europe has moved to become a major buyer this year because
Australia is
the only country to guarantee non-genetic modified canola."
Canada has lost
$300-400 million in canola sales to Europe over the last year
because
government authorities have followed the US model of co-mingling
GE and
non-GE grains. This year over 50% of Canada's 13.4 million acres
of canola
are genetically engineered.

* The mid-January 1999 issue of the California Farmer magazine
reports that
Bt resistance has emerged among pink bollworms, a major cotton
pest, in
Arizona cotton fields Biotech critics have warned for years that
genetically engineered Bt crops will cause major crop pests to
develop
resistance to Bt, thereby destroying the usefulness of the world's
most
important natural biopesticide.

* On Jan. 14 Canadian government officials announced that they
were not

going to allow Monsanto's controversial recombinant Bovine
Growth Hormone
(rBGH or rBST) to be injected into Canada's dairy cows. The ruling
came
after nine years of heavy lobbying by Monsanto and a major nationwide
debate. Although the Canadian government and the media stressed
that the
permanent ban on rBGH was based primarily on animal health concerns,
the
data posted on their web site by the Canadian scientists who reviewed
the
drug made it clear that human health hazards were also a consideration,
namely increased antibiotic residues and elevated levels of a
potent human
growth hormone factor and cancer promoter called IGF-1 found in
rBGH-derived milk and dairy products. (For further information
on the
hazards of rBGH, see our web sites <www.purefood.org> and
<www.icta.org>)

* On Jan. 22, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported that financial
difficulties were forcing Monsanto to slash 1700 employees from
its global
workforce of 28,000. As indicated in previous Food Bytes, Monsanto
now
finds itself strapped for cash in the wake of last fall's failed
merger
with the American Home Products Corp. Monsanto's recent aggressive
multi-billion dollar acquisitions of seed companies, research
labs, and
grain trading operations have increased their power and control
over world
markets, but have drastically reduced their available capital
and lowered
their stock values, leaving them potentially vulnerable to an
unfriendly
takeover by Dupont or Dow or another mega-corporation. Wall Street
investment analyst William Fiala told the St. Louis Post Dispatch,
"It
seems like they (Monsanto) bit off more than they could chew after
the
merger collapsed. They are taking a risk that they could cut too
deep in
terms of personnel or could sell things out of necessity that
are still
good investments. Their debt is beyond Monsanto's comfort level
and beyond
most analysts' comfort level."

* Almost 200 cotton farmers in Georgia, Florida, and North
Carolina are
suing Monsanto for damages after crop failures of Monsanto's Bt
and Roundup
Ready cotton seeds, according to a news story in the Augusta (Georgia)
Chronicle on Jan. 25. In a separate lawsuit 25 cotton farmers
in Texas,
Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Louisiana are suing Monsanto for fraud
and
misrepresentation--also in regard to Bt cotton crop failures.

* On Feb. 5, Carrefour, France's largest supermarket chain,
announced that
they were taking all genetically engineered foods off their shelves.
A
representative from Greenpeace France, Arnaud Apoteker, told anti-biotech
activists at an conference in Cuernavaca, Mexico on Feb. 7 that
Greenpeace
and their allies were planning on driving all GE foods and crops
out of
France by the end of next year.

* On Feb. 12 front-page headline stories in the British press
revealed
that Dr. Arpad Pusztai's explosive research findings on the potential
human
health dangers of genetically engineered potatoes--first aired
in the UK
media last August--had been verified by a panel of 20 international
scientists. Dr. Pusztai, a world renowned researcher on plant
lectins, was
fired last August from the government-funded Rowett Institute
in Scotland,
under very suspicious circumstances, shortly after he went public
with
research indicating that laboratory rats fed genetically engineered
potatoes had suffered significant damage to their immune systems,
thymuses,
kidneys, spleens, and guts. According to press reports, Pusztai's
firing
and the ensuing scientific coverup by the UK government were a
direct
consequence of ongoing White House pressure on Tony Blair to keep
the door
open to Monsanto and other biotech companies to market and grow
GE
products in Britain and across the EU.

When Dr. Pusztai fed conventional potatoes and snowdrop lectin
(GNA) to
rats, no damage occurred. But when Pusztai fed the rats an equivalent
amount of potatoes which were gene-spliced with the snowdrop lectin,
significant and startling damage became quickly evident. Despite
deliberately false U.K. government allegations that Dr. Pusztai's
experiments were purely theoretical, a number of biotech companies
are
currently carrying out similar lab and field tests on gene-spliced
potatoes, rapeseed, rice, and cabbage, calculating that snowdrop-spliced
food crops will repel crop pests.

Perhaps even more alarming than Pusztai's mutant potatoes,
scientists have
subsequently pointed out that Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), a gene
routinely
spliced into millions of acres of US corn, cotton, and potatoes
is now
considered to be a form of lectin. And more alarming yet, another
scientist, Dr. Stanley Ewen, said that a commonly used vector
or production
aid in gene-splicing, the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus, may have caused
serious
damage to the stomach and internal organs of the rats in Pusztai's
study.
If the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (CaMV) is confirmed as being hazardous
to
mammals, this could literally become the "Chernobyl of Biotech"--since
Roundup Ready soybeans, Bt corn, and most other GE crops are produced
using
the CaMV as a genetic splicing vector.

* On Feb. 13, eight days after Carrefour's announcement in
Paris, a major
British supermarket chain, Asda, announced that they were going
to remove
all genetically engineered ingredients from their own-brand goods.
Asda's
move comes in the wake of similar moves by other UK retail chains,
including Iceland and Marks and Spencer. As Sheila McKechnie of
the UK
Consumers Association pointed out in the Daily Mail newspaper
on Feb. 11,
grocery chains banning GE foods like Carrefour will now "have
an enormous
competitive advantage" in the marketplace.

* Bloomberg News reported on February 13 that EU authorities
had rejected
Monsanto's request to grow GE Roundup Ready and Bollgard Bt cotton
plants
in Europe. Two days earlier the European Parliament voted to tighten
GE
regulations, demanding that GE corporations be compelled to purchase
liability insurance to cover any and all damages resulting from
gene-altered crops or foods. The Parliament also demanded stricter
measures
for the prevention of gene transfers from GMOs to other crops
or wild
species, as well as a ban on antibiotic-resistance marker genes
in genetic
crops.

* On February 18, an international coalition of public interest
organizations, led by attorneys from the Center for Food Safety
(Food Bytes
and the Campaign for Food Safety are affiliated with the CFS)
filed a
lawsuit in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C. to have
all Bt crops
taken off of the market because of the hazards they pose to the
environment and public health. The February 18 Bt lawsuit was
announced at
a well-attended press conference in Washington, and generated
significant
coverage in the US press. Last May (see Food Bytes #13) the Center
for
Food Safety sued the FDA to have all genetically engineered foods
taken off
the market on the grounds that they are neither properly labeled
nor
safety-tested, and that lack of mandatory labeling illegally restricts
the
freedom of choice of those who would choose--on religious or ethical
grounds--to avoid GE foods.

"Genetically engineered crops are a threat to farmers,
consumers, and the
environment," said Charles Margulis, a spokesperson for Greenpeace,
one of
the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Joseph Mendelson, Legal Director
of the
Center for Food Safety stated, "EPA has shown a blatant disregard
for
federal law and its own regulations by approving Bt crops without
fully
assessing their environmental safety. Their continuing failure
to regulate
this untested technology forces us to turn to the courts for protection."
For further information on these lawsuits see <www.icta.org>

* On Feb. 23, the Daily Mail newspaper in the UK reported that
three of
Britain's fast-food giants--McDonald's, Burger King, and Kentucky
Fried
Chicken--are responding to customer pressure by eliminating genetically
engineered soya and corn ingredients from their menus. According
to
McDonald's spokesperson Jackie Graveny: "Our aim is to have
McDonald's GM
(genetically modified) free as soon as possible." Similarly
Burger King
stated: "The company is set to ban GM food as soon as possible."
In a
related development the Agriculture Minister in the UK, Nick Brown,
announced on Jan. 31 that UK restaurants will soon be required
to start
labeling "meals which contain certain types of genetically
modified food."

* With more and more major food retailers, restaurants, and
processors in
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Scandinavia, the UK, and
other
nations going "GE-free" a tremendous market now exists
for certified
"non-GE" and organic products. This makes it increasingly
difficult for
governments such as the US, Canada, and Brazil to keep telling
farmers
that their "no labeling and no segregation" policies
on co-mingling GE and
non-GE grains and crops make good economic sense.

* On Feb. 23 India's Supreme Court ruled that all field trials
of
Monsanto's genetically engineered Bt Cotton must be halted. The
court
ruling and temporary legal injunction came in response to a legal
petition
filed by veteran Indian activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, director of
the
Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology. According
to Dr.
Shiva, "This case does not merely have national significance,
it has
international significance. Around the world scientists, environmentalists,
consumer groups and farmers are calling for a moratorium on commercial
releases of genetically engineered crops because of growing evidence
of
ecological hazards and threats to food safety." The court
ruling comes in
the wake of months of protests by Indian farmers and consumers,
many of
whom have organized themselves into a Monsanto "Quit India"
movement. Dr.
Shiva and other activists brought together over 100 grassroots
organizations in Hyderabad on Jan. 7 to launch a nationwide campaign
against Monsanto. On March 9-10 Food Bytes will be attending an
international meeting of biotech activists in India organized
by Dr. Shiva.

* A major backlash has developed against the United States
and major
transnational biotech corporations after an international Biosafety
Protocol treaty was sabotaged in Cartagena, Colombia. The Biosafety
Protocol, supported by over 135 nations and public interest groups
worldwide, would have tightened regulations on the international
transfer
and trade of genetically engineered seeds, grains, and foods.
In a vote on
Feb. 24 the US and five of its allies, the so-called "Miami
Group" (Canada,
Australia, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile) managed to prevent the
passage of
the internationally binding treaty. As US biosafety expert Beth
Burrows of
the Edmonds Institute told the New York Times, "There was
no moral high
ground here (on the part of the US). There was no scientific higher
ground.
It was just cheap power politics." According to the Financial
Times of
London and other EU sources, the US' bully boy tactics at the
Biosafety
Protocol meetings will only serve to exacerbate anti-biotech feelings
in

Europe. A recent statement by George Monbiot in the London
Guardian (Feb.
19) aptly sums up the mood of EU consumers: "Food scares
happen... because
people feel they have no control over what they eat. Our decisions
are made
for us by invisible and unaccountable corporations."

* On Feb. 25 a group of US activists in San Francisco calling
themselves
fabRAGE (Fabulous Resistance Against Genetic Engineering) stripped
off
their clothes and disrupted a conference panel on genetically
engineered
cotton featuring a speaker from the Monsanto Corporation. "We'd
rather go
naked than wear genetically modified cotton!" shouted Biogrrl,
a fashion
diva at the event, as half a dozen activists charged through the
room and
stripped off their biohazglam gowns, chanting: "We don't
want it, won't buy
it, and won't wear it. Super Gene Girl, in a biohazard suit shouted,
"Gene-spliced cotton is not sustainable!" Monsanto representatives
appeared
apoplectic in the face of the action.

"Genetic Imperialism" and the US sabotage of the
Biosafety Protocol on a
historic monument, the Angel of Independence, in the center of
the city.
Police arrested the demonstrators, but the banner-hanging generated
significant coverage in the Mexican media, where until recently
there has
been very little discussion of the GE foods controversy.

* On March 2 the Reuters news agency reported that the UK's
Advertising
Standards Authority wil soon "censure" Monsanto for
a misleading series of
ads on the safety of genetically engineered foods which appeared
last year
in the British press.

Global Days of Action Against Monsanto and Genetic Engineering
April 15-30, 1999

On February 7, 1999, over 40 representatives of activist groups
from
around the world met in Cuernavaca, Mexico to share experiences
and to plan
a global grassroots campaign against the Monsanto Corporation
and
genetically engineered foods. While mass-based grassroots campaigns
have
partially blocked genetically engineered foods and crops thus
far in
Western Europe and India, activists in North America, South America,
Africa, and much of Asia and the Pacific still have a long way
to go in
terms of grassroots education, Movement-building, and mobilization.
Especially in the United States activists have been stymied by
a powerful
Monsanto lobbying and PR campaign that has coopted or bought off
the
Congress and the White House, intimidated the media, and forced
several
dozen unlabeled, untested genetically engineered foods onto the
marketplace. At the present time 51.3 million acres (out of a
global total
of 69.5 million) of US farmland are planted in genetically engineered
crops, including 45% of all cotton crops; 32% of soybeans; 25%
of corn; and
3.5% of potatoes. In addition 700,000 dairy cows are being injected
with
Monsanto's rBGH every two weeks. Most non-organic processed food
in the US
now contains at least trace levels of genetically engineered ingredients.

To help build the kind of U.S. and global Movement required
to bring
Monsanto and the other GE Giants under control, and to move global
agriculture and global economic development in a sustainable and
organic
direction, food and agriculture activists at the February 7 Cuernavaca
meeting endorsed the call for Global Days of Action against Monsanto
and
genetic engineering on April 15-30. The interim Monsanto Campaign
steering
committee of Vandana Shiva (India), Mika Iba (Japan), Tony Clarke
(Canada),
and Ronnie Cummins (USA) are calling on activists all over the
world to
step up their activism against Monsanto and genetic engineering,
using the
fourth annual April 15-30 Global Days of Action as a vehicle for
amplifying
our message, building our local and national activist networks,
and further
strengthening our international solidarity. Food Bytes was endorsed
at the
Cuernavaca meeting as an international clearinghouse for anti-Monsanto
and
Global Days of Action activities. If you are planning anti-Monsanto/GDA
activities during April 15-30, please send us the details at Food
Bytes so
we can inform the media as well as activists all over the world.
And of
course in Western Europe and India, where nearly every day has
now become a
Global Day of Action against Monsanto and genetic engineering,
keep up the
good work! Further details on the April GDA will be posted on
the web at

This morning on TV it said Monsanto to be acquired by DuPont?
We need to
alert them to the fact that if they go through with this they
will be
responsible for the lawsuits on the aspartame issue and that aspartame
has
been declared a world epidemic. Monsanto just doesn't know where
to turn to
get rid of their bad name.

"" A New York Times report that chemical giants DuPont
(DD) and Monsanto (MTC)
are in merger talks sent Monsanto's stock soaring.
Shares in the company gained 2-7/8 to 47-1/4, while DuPont, a
Dow component,
barely budged, rising 3/8 to 51-11/16. "

AT LONG LAST, SOME LEGAL ACTION IS TAKEN IN THE US TO STOP
THIS SCOURGE

Subject: EPA Is Sued Over Gene-Altered Crops

Thursday February 18

EPA Is Sued Over Gene-Altered Crops
By JANELLE CARTER AP Farm Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A growing trend of genetically altering crops
with an ingrown
biological pesticide is too risky for the environment, a coalition
of
environmentalists and organic farmers charged in a lawsuit Thursday.

They want to force the government to end its approval of what
are known as Bt
crops.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court by Greenpeace International,
the
Center for Food Safety and the International Federation of Organic
Agricultural
Movements charges the Environmental Protection Agency with ``wanton
destruction'' of Bt, which it calls the ``world's most important
biological
pesticide.''

``This is just another short term fix that industry is willing
to use up,'' said
Jane Rissler, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The complainants are concerned that using the pesticide in
genetically altered
plants poses environmental risks that will change the ecological
balance as well
as hurt organic farmers who don't want to use genetically-altered
products. They
complain that EPA has failed to address their concerns since approving
the
product.

EPA approved the use of Bt in potatoes in 1995 and has since
agreed to its use
in corn and cotton.

The lawsuit demands that EPA cancel registration of all genetically
engineered
Bt plants; cease approval of any new Bt plants and immediately
perform an
environmental impact assessment.

``We can no longer sit idly by,'' said Joseph Mendelson, legal
director for the
Center for Food Safety. ``EPA has shown a blatant disregard for
federal law and
its own regulations by approving Bt crops without fully assessing
their
environmental safety.''

Bt is actually a soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, that
produces toxins to
kill insects. It has been used for years as a spray by farmers
and gardeners who
like the fact that it kills insects while remaining nontoxic to
mammals.

But the use of Bt has changed in recent years with advances
in genetic
engineering. Scientists are now able to develop plants that contain
a gene for
Bt toxin, giving the crops built-in protection.

The move has been controversial, however, as many groups have
raised concerns
that insects will become resistant to Bt, which would seriously
hurt organic
farmers who are permitted to use Bt insecticides as their only
emergency pest
control option.

An EPA spokesman defended the agency's decision.

``EPA carefully makes sure that the biotech products we review
fully comply with
all legal requirements designed to ensure that they are environmentally
sound
and environmentally beneficial,'' said spokesman Dave Cohen. ``We
believe the
actions we've taken with regard to Bt will be sustained against
this legal
challenge.''

Some organic farmers say an even bigger threat is pollination
from the
genetically-altered plant seeping from conventional farms to organic
farms.

Charles Walker, president of Terra Firma Inc. - an organic
food company in
Hudson, Wis., said he was forced to recall over $100,000 worth
of organic
tortilla chips that had been contaminated with genetically-engineered
corn. He
blames pollination from another farm.

``Unless Bt corn is withdrawn, it will soon contaminate every
corn field in the
country,'' Walker said.

This week's Healing Our World article: "Got Milk? - I
hope not!" has
just been posted on the LYCOS Environment News Service. You can
view it
at http://www.ens.lycos.com/ens/jan99/1999L-01-25g.html. This
week, I
examine the issues with bovine growth hormone, now present in
most milk
in the U.S. Learn some ways to protect yourself in our ever-increasing
toxic world.

Thanks and I wish you all the best.

Sincerely,

Jackie

P.S. A complete archive of all 80 Healing Our World articles
can be seen
at me website, http://healingourworld.com
--
Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
Professor of Environmental Studies

>From "Eat the State!" Vol. 3, Issue #29 7 April
99

Prince Charles' Crusade (excerpts)

Prince Charles is now being hailed by foes of the genetic-industrial
complex as their doughty champion. Near the end of February the
Prince was
vainly ordered by Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair to shut down
his royal
website

http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk

which has been featuring vigorous denunciations by the heir
apparent of what
in Britain is termed GM, that is, genetically modified crops.
(In the U.S.,
the equivalent term is GE, genetically engineered crops.)

As befits a long-term organic farmer, the Prince links genetically
modified
crops to the blight of an agriculture dependent on chemicals,
raising
questions of poor land management and baneful ecological practices
which
leave "sterile fields offering little or no food or shelter
to wild life."
Genetic material, the Prince thunders in one posting, "does
not stay where
it is put. Pollen is spread by the wind and by insects to organic
crops
growing nearby. This cannot be right."

The Prince continues, "I wonder about the claims that
some GM crops are
essential to feed the world's populations. Is it really true?
Isn't the
problem sometimes lack of money rather than lack of food? And
how will the
companies who own this technology make a sufficient profit from
selling
their products to the world's poorest people? Wouldn't it be better
to
concentrate instead on the sustainable techniques which can double
or
treble the yields from traditional farming systems?"

Prince Charles concludes by zeroing in on one of the paramount
political
issues, demanding "effective and comprehensive schemes to
ensure that
those consumers like me who do not want to eat GM foods can avoid
them."

It might seem an irony to some that the British heir apparent
should be
adopting a principled, enlightened position, in marked contrast
to the
social democrats and their leader, Blair. But their roles are
entirely in
character. Prince Charles has long been conspicuous for sensible
and
sometimes radical ecological positions--on the Amazon rainforest,
on
appropriate land use and resource management and on organic agriculture.
He's no Johnny-Come-Lately to the issues, having gone into organic
farming
in the early 1980s.

On the other hand, Tony Blair's tradition of social democracy
has always
had a frenzied enthusiasm for supposed technological progress.
It was
Harold Wilson, leader of the Labor Party in the 1960s, who used
to hymn
"the white heat of technology." The tradition of rambling
and rural hiking
that used to mark British radicals has long since gone.

Far dearer to Blair's heart are the big corporations--most
notably
Monsanto--which are now pushing their patents for genetically
modified
crops into Europe. The reason why Blair demanded that Prince Charles
shut
down his website (on the grounds that it constituted an unwarranted
piece
of political meddling by the Prince) is that the whole GM issue
is
politically hot in the UK at the moment, as it is throughout Europe.

The stakes are high for Monsanto's GM products. For example,
the Consumers'
Union estimates that Monsanto's bovine growth hormone, rBGH, could
earn the
company $500 million a year in the United States and another $1
billion a
year internationally. The haul from Monsanto's Round Up Ready
soybeans,
potatoes, and corn and its terminator seeds could be substantially--perhaps
tens of billions--more.

Monsanto has always been able to count on the aid of the U.S.
government to
promote its products. With the unceasing encouragement of the
Dept. of
Agriculture, American farmers have planted more than 50 million
acres in
Monsanto's genetically-engineered crops in just the past four
years. The
Food and Drug Administration has also played along, acceding to
the
company's demand that genetically-engineered crops not be labeled
as such.

When faced with the almost certain prospect that the European
Union would
ban the import of Monsanto genetically-engineered corn in 1998,
the company
unleashed an unprecedented lobbying effort, flying a group of
critical
journalists to the U.S., where they visited Monsanto's corporate
headquarters and its labs. Then the scribes were taken to Washington,
where
they were given the tour of the White House, including a rare
visit to the
Oval Office. Top Clinton aides rallied to the company's defense,
including
U.S. Trade Rep. Charlene Barshevsky, Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright,
Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, and Commerce Secretary
Bill Daley.
All lobbied their European counterparts on behalf of the company.
Even Bill
Clinton and Al Gore got in on the act, engaging in some last minute
arm-twisting of the Irish and French prime ministers. Both the
French and
Irish caved in to the pressure by July 1998. This spring Monsanto's
genetically-engineered corn will be planted in Europe for the
first time.

<snip>

Back in Britain, the Labor government, secure on top of its
vast majority,
is nonetheless embarrassed by blunders on the GM issue. It has
emerged that
Lord Sainsbury, Labor's science minister who is deeply involved
in GM
decision-making, had financial stakes in GM companies as well
as his own
familial connection ($36 million in dividends) to the vast Sainsbury
retail
empire, which markets genetically modified tomatoes.

Prince Charles commands a considerable measure of public support
from
Britons deeply suspicious of scientific manipulation of their
admittedly
dreadful food.